


Smoke and Guns

by Black_Briar



Series: Who Watches the Heroes [3]
Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-08-17
Packaged: 2019-06-15 07:40:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 53,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15408219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Briar/pseuds/Black_Briar
Summary: Quill and the rest of the Guardians go on a cross-universe hunt for a bunch of colorful space rocks, nearly blow up a planet, and come face to face with someone Gamora hoped to never see again.Can be read independently of parts one and two.





	1. Call it Off

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome back! Or I guess just welcome in general, if you haven't checked out the series before. This part can be read independently of the other two, and while there may be a few hints and references you might not pick up on here and there, I really don't believe the story will suffer for it. That being said, if there's something you don't get then feel free to shoot me a question and I'll explain whatever you like! I am at your service.
> 
> Also, I'm altering my posting schedule just one more time, and this is the one I'm going to stick with for hopefully the remainder of the series. I'll be posting Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for the foreseeable future.

It started innocently enough.

"Remind me again why we thought it was a good idea? I feel like I'm about to suffocate, here!"

"Quill, I swear to god if you blow our cover I'll kill you."

"What, are you serious? It's  _hot_ in here, okay, I need some room to breathe!"

"Well maybe if you'd stop breathing down my  _neck—"_

"Breathing down your—I'm a foot away from your neck! C'mon, Gamora, cut me a little slack! I'm used to doing the whole  _shooting_ thing, not the whole  _hiding_ thing. Seriously, why couldn't we just beat down the front gates and capture the target  _without_ squeezing ourselves into an alien warlord's closet?"

" _Because_ , Quill, gunning down the doors would have led to us being gunned down by the approximately fifty bodyguards accompanying the target at all times. We're supposed to be quiet. We're supposed to leap out and grab the guy before his bodyguards realize what's happening, and put a gun to his head so they can't hurt us."

"Yeah, but we couldn't have hidden literally anywhere else but in a closet? Or, could you have hidden in a  _different_ closet? Don't get me wrong, the one-on-one time is great and all—hey,  _ow—_ but breathing sounds good. Doesn't breathing sound good right now?"

"Quill, shut  _up._ They're coming."

"What? I can't hear anything, how can you hear—?"

"I said shut up!"

"I just don't understand how—"

"I  _strongly_  dislike you right now!"

"Okay, okay! Geez, I'll be quiet."

"Then stop talking about being quiet and actually do it!"

"Well if  _you_  would stop talking to  _me—!"_

Footsteps sounded outside the corridor, and Quill shut himself up just as the door swung open. He was immediately as still as stone, muscles locked tight as he hung onto Gamora's arm and tried not to jostle the clothing. How he'd ended up there, packed against a teammate in some warlord's closet, was anyone's guess.

Well okay, actually it wasn't. The Nova Corps had asked for help, and the Guardians—ever the helpful allies so long as there was money involved—had come down from on high to take care of a few remaining Kree radicals hiding out on a moon a few leagues outside of Xandarian territory. If they took out the boss and brought him back for imprisonment, they'd be paid a fortune.

…Which was the reason they'd had to hatch this plan, where two people hid inside a closet not big enough for one and waited for the newest Kree leader to show his ugly mug so they could capture him.

_Brilliant._

There was a loud bang as the doors hit the wall, and then Quill was peering through a crack in the closet door as the man he recognized as the Kree leader stormed into the room and shrieked something in his native language.

"Now?" Quill whispered.

Gamora elbowed him. " _Not yet."_

The man moved further into the room, still yelling at attendants that hadn't yet followed. He seemed frazzled, distracted—in the perfect position for them to leap out and grab him.

"Now?" he whispered again.

"Not  _yet."_

The man kept moving, stepping right up behind the desk beside the bed. He went through it furiously, shuffling through drawers and coming up empty. Then he growled and stepped toward the closet, reaching out with the intention of opening it. The attendants were just beginning to file in, looking just as flustered.

_"Now?"_

"Wait…"

The man's hand settled on the door to the closet, and Quill bristled.

Gamora reached for the gun at her hip.  _"Now!"_

Quill moved to kick open the doors to the closet and jump out, but Gamora beat him to it. She twirled her gun on the way out, landed her boot atop the desk, and a moment later the Kree leader was pinned with a gun to his head.

"Gamora—!" Quill staggered out of the tiny closet after her, already reaching for his blasters. But by the time he righted himself, there were already a dozen guards in the doorway with guns pointed their way.

Quill quickly stepped behind Gamora.

She pressed the gun even harder up under the Kree leader's jaw. "If anyone makes a move, I'll shoot him."

The guards didn't seem to know what to do. One of them shifted as if with the intention of firing on them, but the instant he did Gamora yanked her captive back and snapped, "I said  _don't move!"_

They stopped moving.

"Quill," Gamora snapped, "get the window."

He jumped into action, moving to shoot through the locks keeping the window closed. He holstered his weapons and slapped off the shattered locks, then moved to haul the bars away and throw them to the ground. When he shot a glance over his shoulder, he saw that Gamora had positioned herself in between him and the dozen or so gunmen waiting to murder him.  _Joy_.

Footsteps were sounding further down the corridor. Reinforcements, probably, coming to offset the most ridiculous plan the Guardians had ever come up with. Quill sucked in a sharp breath and started working at unlatching the window itself.  _Shit. The lock fused to the windowsill when I shot it._

"Don't move!" Gamora snapped again as some of the guards became more brazen.

"You won't shoot him," one of them snarled in weak English. "He's your leverage. If you kill him, you'll be vulnerable."

"Yes, but your leader will be dead."

"Still, you wouldn't dare!"

"Try me."

Quill scrabbled at the lock. Then, realizing he was getting nowhere, he stepped back.

"Peter," Gamora hissed through her teeth. "Open the window!"

"It's—it's  _stuck_ , Gamora, just give me a minute!"

"We don't  _have_  a minute!"

The Kree were beginning to press in. Just inching forward, just testing—and of course Gamora couldn't actually shoot their leader, otherwise they'd lose the bounty, so she just ended up taking steps back in turn.

The footsteps in the corridor grew louder, and then there were an additional ten guards bursting through the doorway. They raised their weapons, and Quill swore.  _Stun guns._

"Peter—!"

"I'm on it!"

He whirled around, grabbed a chair from the Kree leader's desk, and chucked it through the window.

Gunfire blazed behind them as Quill leapt from the shattered window, his rocket boots flaring into action to stop him from plummeting down the side of the sloped building from the eighteenth story. Gamora, on the other hand…

Gamora leapt after him with reckless abandon, avoiding the gunfire by millimeters and sliding down the side of the building with the Kree leader still under one arm. She returned fire as she slid, came to a ledge, and pushed off of it with all her strength, flying across the gap between buildings and landing on the side of one  _not_  filled with homicidal maniacs. She punched a hole in the glass and rocketed inside.

"Gamora—!"

_"Meet me on the outside!"_  she yelled through the coms.  _"And call Rocket!"_

Quill raised a hand to his ear, about to do just that, when more gunfire began to sear past his head. The Kree had found him, and were opening fire.

"Rocket!" he called, even as he swooped beneath the blasts and swerved out of reach. "Rocket, we've got the target! Bring the ship around  _now!"_  Then he yelped, finding out that he apparently  _wasn't_ out of range as one of the Kree guards clipped him in the shoulder. He fired his thrusters and ducked behind the building Gamora had fled into.

The coms fizzed.  _"I'm sorry, what did you say? Did you say you were having a great time, and wanted to stay a while longer? 'Cause I gotta tell you, Quill, that sounds like a great idea!"_

"Stop messing around and get down here!" He shot toward the bottom of the building, where he hoped Gamora would emerge with the target. "We've got guys after us with guns! Lots and lots of guns!"

_"Yeah, yeah, I got it! I'm takin' the Milano down to the surface now."_

_"Hurry!"_  Quill spotted the doorway on the ground level and went there, landing hard. "Gamora? Gamora, can you hear me?"

_"Almost there!"_

There were a few more seconds of waiting, where Quill could hear the Kree trying to locate them. Then Gamora was shattering the window  _next_ to the door rather than going through the door itself, because that was just how she was, and she was throwing the target into Quill's arms and taking off down the street.

Quill hefted the guy over one shoulder and lifted back into the air, flying after her. "You could at least wait up!"

Gamora shoved a few pedestrians out of the way and kept running, shooting him a glance over one shoulder. "You could keep up!"

Quill jumped as a shot rang out  _way_ too close to his ear, flying faster and sweeping around a corner to avoid being shot. The Kree leader appeared to have passed out sometime after having been thrown through the window, so he flopped lifelessly in Quill's arms as he wove through the streets.

"Rocket!" Gamora called. "Rocket, where are you? We need retrieval!"

_"I'm getting there, I'm getting there! Just hold on!"_

Quill looked up at the sound of firing engines, and there was the Milano. It dipped low over the streets, clipping buildings and turning sharp corners to keep up with the team on the ground.

Rocket made an irritated sound.  _"Streets are too close, guys! We're gonna need an alternate pickup spot."_

"And we couldn't have figured this out  _before_  we went tearing through them?"

_"Kinda slipped my mind!"_

Quill yelped, nearly crashing into the side of a building as Gamora took a sudden left. "Okay, that's it! I'm flying the target up to you, so put down the ramp and hover!"

_"On it!"_

Quill tightened his hold on the target, adjusted his trajectory, and shot straight up into the air as Gamora continued to run. He ducked one of the Milano's wings as it nearly got him in the head, yelling, "Careful!"

_"I'm putting down the ramp, so get on board fast!"_

The ramp lowered, landing gear sliding out to accompany it, and Quill gripped a wheel to pull himself steadily into the Milano. Well, okay—maybe  _steadily_ wasn't quite the right word. He chucked the target into the hold like a sack of potatoes and hit the ground hard on one shoulder, groaning.

"You have returned triumphant!" Drax moved forward to take the target, who was still completely unconscious. "But where is Gamora?"

"Working on that!" Quill got to his feet and checked his boots. "Rocket, take us up!"

There was no response, but he must have heard him because the engines flared and the Milano took off.

"Come on, come on…" Quill peered down the open bottom of the ship, straining his eyes for any sign of Gamora.

"There she is!"

She was sprinting down a side alley, ducking a few Kree guards that had finally caught up. Putting his mask up, Quill leapt out of the ship and dropped down behind the Kree.

"Hey, ugly!"

They turned, he fired twice, and they went down in a neat pile.

Gamora stepped over their bodies and threw an arm around Quill's shoulders so he could fly her up. "Would have been a good idea to bring along one of Rocket's aero rigs!"

"Yeah, but we weren't  _supposed_  to have to break the window and fling ourselves down the side of a building!" The ramp stayed down, and Quill zigzagged through the remaining gunfire to deposit Gamora safely inside the ship. "Rocket _, go!"_

The ramp shot back up, the landing gear retracted, and Rocket took them up. Bursts of energy bombarded the side of the ship but had no effect as they rose higher and higher and retreated from the moon. They'd made it out.

Quill retracted his mask and took a deep breath, relieved to be back in the ship. The mission had been unusual to say the least, requiring them to take a live person captive, and the whole thing had been a bit chaotic. Not to mention the good singe to the shoulder and the pain in his hip from where he'd clipped a building.

"We have the target!" Drax called triumphantly. "I transformed a spare room into a cell and locked him there, so that we can return him to Xandar!"

"Well done," Gamora said shortly. She was nursing what looked like a burn on one forearm, from where someone with a blaster had shot just a bit too close. "I'm sure the Xandarians will be pleased to know we've captured him."

"And we'll get paid," Quill threw in. He stepped further into the hold and moved for the ladder that would let him up into the main rooms of the Milano. He wanted to treat his burn, and maybe Gamora's too. "Come on, let's get up there and plot a course back to Xandar. Just having this creep on my ship is making my skin crawl."

Gamora and Drax kept speaking as Quill ascended, but he wasn't paying much attention. The past few months had been difficult to say the least, what with the whole 'having to kill his dad' thing, and he was ready to finish the mission and take a few weeks off to do whatever they all wanted. Of course, whatever they all wanted usually translated into some kind of mission—but he was ready for that, too. He just didn't want to be in charge of saving the galaxy for a while.

"Get the guy?" Rocket called as he stepped into the cockpit to check how things were doing.

"You know we did!" Quill peered over his shoulder at the navigation panel, seeing that Rocket had already plotted their route back to Xandar.

Mantis perked up. "Oh, you did? Then congratulations are in order!"

"No need; we're just that awesome." He shot her a smile, said hello to Groot (whose response was as predictable as ever), and passed by Drax as he made for the room they'd designated as the infirmary. His arm stung.

"Oh, hey!" He closed the door behind him. Gamora was already there, spreading a thin treatment of burn gel over her arm. Bandages were on standby. "They got you too, huh?"

She just shook her head. "Maybe they wouldn't have if we hadn't been required to leap through a window and plummet to the ground."

"…Yeah. Sorry about that." He stepped further into the infirmary and reached for the burn gel, popping the cap and taking a moment to remove his jacket. Then he spread a bit of it onto the burn.  _Oh, much better._

Gamora paused and just watched at him. She said nothing, but Quill had known her long enough to know that something was bothering her.

"Are you…okay?"

She looked away sharply and reached for the bandages. "Forgive me. I'm just…thinking. The last few months have been rather hectic, and we still haven't found a way of stopping my father, and—"

"Woah, woah, woah! We're doing our best, Gamora, you know that! There's only so much galaxy-saving we can do in a few months. Your father is next on the list."

"I—I know." She ripped end of the bandages off with her teeth and tucked everything into place. "It's just that the last we heard of my father he was trying to get his hands on the power stone, and since then he's been suspiciously quiet. I'm concerned that he's plotting again."

"Isn't he always? Here, pass me the bandages."

She tossed him the roll, and he started unwinding them. "You seem less than concerned, for someone who knows firsthand the power of an infinity stone."

"Look, just—" He trailed off with a pained hiss, tugging the bandages tight around his arm. "All we have to worry about right now is getting the Kree leader back to Xandar and collecting our bounty. Once we do that, we can think about your daddy issues. Hey— _ow!"_

Gamora shook her head, hand falling back to her side. "My father is a being with the potential for limitless power. He already tried to take one infinity stone, and I'm sure he'll be after the others—which means that we have to do whatever we can to prevent them from falling into his grasp. I'm not sure if we can kill him or even stop him, but we at least have to try."

"I know." Quill sighed, pinching at the bridge of his nose. It had been less than a week since he'd had to kill his dad, and they were already talking about killing Gamora's. He wanted a  _break_ —but he knew how worried Gamora was, about Thanos and about what her sister might try to pull on him, so maybe a break wasn't really much of an option.

Gamora's expression softened, like she knew what he was thinking. "I'm sorry. I know it was hard, to lose your father the way you did."

He snorted. 'The guy was an asshole. He had to go."

"And Thanos is just as much of an asshole, yet I feel great sorrow when I think of killing him. He's still family, just like Ego was still your father."

"Yeah, well…" He trailed off, fidgeting with his bandages to give himself something to do. "It didn't exactly work out."

"Quill—"

"No, no, it's fine! That bastard killed my mom. He deserved to go the way he did."

Gamora reached out again, but this time it was just to rest a hand on his shoulder. "He did. But you still feel the pain of his loss."

"I—yeah, okay." He stopped playing with his bandages. "It sucks. But you're right about your dad running rampant, so after we drop off the target we should turn right around and start looking."

"Trying to placate me, Quill?"

"Something like that."

She smiled. "It's working." Then she stepped past him, her hand slipping off of his shoulder. "We'll get back to Xandar and do what we're being paid to do, then we can start thinking about where Thanos might be. We can't confront him without being killed, but we might be able to figure out where he's headed next. If he's got his eyes on another infinity stone…"

Quill shivered. "Not good."

"No. Not good at all."

 

* * *

 

Xandar was predictably thrilled to have the latest Kree radical behind bars, though there was a strangely tense atmosphere hanging around that Quill couldn't quite pinpoint. Also predictably, that meant that the Guardians were a good twenty thousand units richer when they finished up for the day and headed back to the Milano.

"Another good day's work," Rocket said as they entered the ship and prepared to go off to their separate quarters. "I say we get out of here for a while and take a break before our next job."

"I also suggest that we take a break," Drax declared. "We have been working nonstop for months, and I have grown weary!"

"We all have," Mantis said. She looked to Quill and said, "Isn't that right?"

"Yeah, well…" He shot a nervous glance at Gamora. She was staring silently at the ground. "I think we have another mission to deal with, guys."

Rocket's ears flattened to his head. "What, already? We just got done with this one!"

"I am Groot."

"Yeah, what he said! What in the galaxy could we possibly have to deal with right now?"

Gamora looked back up. Her eyes were clouded with something like pain, something like fear. "Thanos," she whispered.

There was this pause, where no one seemed to know what to say. Quill winced and waited for the storm.

Then,  _"Are you kidding me?"_

Gamora raised a hand and said, "He's dangerous and must be stopped."

"Yeah, but by  _us?_  We're the Guardians of the freakin' Galaxy, not—well,  _whoever_  the hell could take down that nutcase! We can't just waltz up to Thanos and expect escape with our lives, let alone kill him!"

"Maybe not," Gamora agreed, "but we have to do  _something._ We saw him attempt to level an entire galaxy by getting his hands on an infinity stone. He has to be stopped before he succeeds another way."

"We took  _care_ of the infinity stone, we—!"

"There's more than  _one_ , Rocket, you know that. The Collector specifically told us there were six. Just because we've contained one of them doesn't mean that all of them are safe from Thanos!"

"So you want to  _what,_ traipse across the galaxy looking for a bunch of  _rocks?"_

"I want to stop the entire universe from being destroyed by my father."

Rocket opened his mouth like he wanted to say something, then fell short. He crossed his arms and huffed.

Gamora looked from face to face, expression still as stone. "There are six infinity stones floating out there somewhere, and if Thanos gets his hands on even one then he could become unstoppable. We took a detour to Ego's planet because it was necessary, but now we've returned  _and_ completed several missions so that we have the funding to survive for several months without paid work. We no longer have an excuse not to stop him."

"Oh, but…" Mantis frowned. "Isn't this being you call Thanos incredibly powerful? Drax has told me of his exploits, and they sound quite fearsome."

"He is powerful," Gamora said, "which is why we have to take care of him  _now_ , before he has a chance to hurt anyone else. He's destroyed entire planets—entire  _systems_. If left unchecked, he will continue to rampage."

"He will require the stones?" Drax asked.

" _Yes_. Which is why we have to—"

Rocket uncrossed his arms. "Traipse across the galaxy," he said again, "looking for a bunch of space rocks."

_"Yes._ If we can contain them, Thanos won't be as much of a threat. Still a threat, yes—but just not quite as deadly."

"I don't—"

_"Please,"_ Gamora said. "I have traveled this galaxy as a part of this team, performing job after job, helping all of you to save countless lives. Now I ask that you help me to save even more."

And again, there was that silence. That awful, thick silence that didn't end until it did, when Rocket opened his mouth and asked, "Quill, what do you think about this nonsense?"

Quill jumped, startled back into the conversation. He knew that going after Thanos even indirectly would be incredibly dangerous, and maybe even end in all of their deaths. But he cared about Gamora, and she cared about this, and that was enough. He thought he could put off his vacation for a few more months.

"What do I think?" he echoed. "I think that we have some space rocks to hunt down."

Rocket stared at him like he was insane.

"This does seem like a very bad idea," Drax said, "however I have decided to trust you so I will not protest. Gamora, Quill—let us find the space rocks!"

"Yes, let us do that!" Mantis exclaimed. "And let us stay extremely safe in the process!"

"I am Groot!"

"Extremely safe," Gamora repeated, hiding a smile. "What do you say, Rocket?"

He huffed, "If I say yes, do we all have to stand around like idiots in a circle again?"

It was as good as an agreement, and everyone knew it.

"Where should we start?" Quill asked.

Rocket pushed past him and snapped, "We should start in the  _morning_. It's late and I'm tired."

_"You're_  tired?" Quill asked, incredulous. "Who do you think did all the running and heavy lifting?"

"Me," Gamora said flatly.

"Right, right—her!"

Gamora rolled her eyes, but she was still smiling. "Let's get some rest, you idiots. We'll deal with the Thanos problem tomorrow."

So that's what they did. They went off to their individual quarters, slid into bed, and slept.


	2. Tivian

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late-ish post, I had another story updating today that I had to put a LOT of time into. 
> 
> Enjoy the second chapter! I appreciate the kudos so far!

"Of the six infinity stones, we know where one of them is located—on Xandar. The rest…they're a complete mystery."

Quill tapped his fingers against the table listlessly as Gamora spoke. They'd been trying to hash out what to do about the infinity stones for what felt like hours, but no one seemed to have a better idea than to just charge headlong at Thanos and demand the locations of the stones. And yeah,  _that_ was sure to go well. They didn't even know if Thanos himself knew all the locations, and even if he did, they'd die trying to get the information out of him. They'd never even get close enough to ask a question.

"Well we have to start  _somewhere,"_ Quill said. "When I found the purple stone—"

"The power stone."

"—When I found the  _power_ stone it was just in some random cave on some random planet. Who's to say that the other stones aren't lurking around in places like that?"

"If that's the case, we could search for centuries and stand little chance at finding even one additional stone."

"Then we need an easier method! Come on, guys, we're like the pros at slacking off. Let's figure out how to track the stones' locations!"

Gamora narrowed her eyes. "Impossible. If there was any way of tracking them from a distance, my father would have done so already."

"Yeah, but he doesn't have an infinity stone—we do. We could use it to find the others!"

"Are you crazy?" Rocket burst out. "We can't just stroll up to the Nova Corps and ask them to let us experiment on an infinity stone! How would we even  _do_ that? We're not scientists!"

"They have scientists!" Quill tried, but he had a feeling he was already beaten. "They could—"

"What they could  _do_ is get themselves killed messing around with the stone." Gamora shook her head. "It's too dangerous. Maybe if we had someone highly trained in the mystic arts we could have them do something to track the other stones down, but for now we can't take the risk."

"Killjoy," Quill accused. He knew she was right, though—they all did.

Drax frowned and said, "There must be some simple manner of tracking these stones."

"If there were, they'd be in the hands of common thieves rather than hidden across the galaxy."

"Now I agree that you are being a killjoy."

"I'm being realistic." Gamora looked to the others. "These stones are the most powerful relics in all of the universe. If there is a way of tracking them, it won't be easy."

Quill stopped tapping his fingers on the table. "Hey."

"What is it?"

"We just need somewhere to start, right? A lead?"

"Of course," Gamora said. "Did you have something in mind?"

He nodded, a spark of hope in his chest as he remembered, "The Collector."

Gamora raised a brow. "The man that intended to buy the power stone from us."

"Yeah, exactly! He knew what he was buying, right? And his name is the  _Collector._ So maybe he was set on getting all the stones, and he knows where some of them are! Maybe he even  _has_  some of them in his collection already."

Gamora glanced to the others. "It's possible. Or at least, it's the best start we're going to get. If he can give us even one hint as to the location of one other stone, the trip will have been worth it."

"This guy  _saw_ what the last stone did to his collection; he's a  _real_  moron if he has any more," Rocket said. "But it's our best shot."

"It could be dangerous, couldn't it?" Mantis asked. "This Collector person does not sound like a nice man.

"Like Rocket said, it's our best shot." Gamora got to her feet and started toward the cockpit. "Let's get out of here."

 

* * *

 

The road to Knowhere was tense.

Quill mostly kept to himself, sitting in the pilot's seat and watching the stars fly by. This whole situation…it was far more dangerous than he preferred. Sure, he'd saved the galaxy a couple of times, but that didn't mean he was eager to throw himself back into a galaxy-saving position. Especially not when they were up against the Mad Titan himself.

He'd seen what the power stone could do, and the immense strength required for someone to wield it. If they were up against someone who had the fortitude to hold  _all_ of the infinity stones without being killed, someone who could control the power stone's destructive abilities times six…

Well. In simple terms, he didn't like their odds.

But there they were, flying across the galaxy to Knowhere so they could stop Thanos. Quill didn't think he'd ever been quite as tense as he was during that trip, and the others seemed equally nervous. Rocket wouldn't stop making minor adjustments to the flight plan, only to change them back a few hours later. Mantis was buzzing, bouncing from room to room and trying to lighten the mood without really helping. Groot didn't care about his games, choosing instead to stare out the window in silence. Drax did nothing but sit in the corner and tell stories, mostly to Mantis but to the others as well. And Gamora—she sat in her seat and polished the blade of her sword.

_This is a bad idea,_ everyone seemed to be thinking, but not even Rocket would say it.

The mood only grew heavier as they neared the Collector's home. They were all aware that they could be about to come into contact with one or more of the infinity stones, depending on how many the Collector had gotten his hands on already, and no one was eager to do that after how their last encounter with one of the stones had gone. They'd nearly died. No one wanted to do it again.

"Next stop, the Collector." Quill entered in the command to take them down, where the docking bay was located. The others were already in their seats. "I hope you guys are ready for a fight, because this guy won't be giving up the stones peacefully."

"And we can't simply pay for them if they  _are_  here." Gamora finally slid her sword back into its sheathe and raised her head. "He won't be willing to part with them. We'll need to fight."

"Okay," Rocket said, "but don't you guys think we might be forgetting something pretty damn important? Like, what the hell are we going to do with the stones after we have them?"

"We'll worry about that after they're secure."

"Yeah, but maybe collecting the stones is exactly what Thanos would  _want_  us to—"

"We aren't  _collecting_ them," Gamora snapped. "No two infinity stones can  _ever_  be in the same place, do you understand that? Our mission is to secure them, yes, but in locations all across the galaxy so that even if my father acquires one, the others will not be within easy reach. And if we know where they are, we can defend or otherwise move them if he begins to get close."

Drax frowned. "Will it not already be over if he gets his hands on one stone?"

"Well…" Gamora scowled at the ground. "I would not go so far as to say defeating him would be impossible, but I also wouldn't go as far to say that it's likely. Our only method of fighting him would be to use a wielder of a stone to defeat another wielder."

"Which would be great, if not for the fact that no mortal can use the stones." Quill shook his head, bringing out the landing gear as they neared the platform. No one was there to greet them, as they were unannounced. But he was sure that the Collector had seen them coming.

"We know that no mortal can use the  _power_ stone. The others, maybe…"

"Are you suggesting that someone mortal could actual use one of the infinity stones? Someone like any of us?"

Gamora groaned, "It's not that  _simple._ All of the stones have different rules for use, different powers required to wield them. The power stone would vaporize any mortal who touched it with their bare flesh, but a different stone might be perfectly happy to reside with that same mortal so long as they met different qualifications to use it."

The cabin went quiet, each member deep in thought.

"Well," Quill said, powering down the ship and putting down the ramp for them to disembark, "we made it." The others were already getting out of their seats, grabbing any weapons they thought they would need and heading for the exit.

In no time at all they were walking down the ramp and back into Knowhere.

"You make it sound like they have personalities," Mantis said curiously, stepping over a rather large rock in her path. The landscape was still a bit jagged from the power stone's explosion the last time they'd visited. "Are they like people?"

"Not quite," Gamora said. "Though some are more particular than others. You must understand that much of this is ancient history, and may be skewed, but in legends there is some talk of the soul stone being unwilling to lend its power to anyone it perceives as undeserving. Meanwhile, the time stone appears content to be used by anyone who knows the right words to awaken it. There was even an ancient order developed around protecting it, though no one knows where they vanished to. So perhaps they don't really have  _personalities,_ but they do have preferences."

"Too complicated," Quill muttered, ducking beneath an archway. They were approaching the Collector's home now, ascending through the head of the ancient celestial being.

Gamora nodded. "Very. And much of it is only speculation or ancient legend, so there's room for error."

"Well that's just  _great_."

They drew to a halt before the great doors leading into the Collector's showroom. Through those doors, there could be an infinity stone—or even more than one. Then again, there could be none and they would have reached a dead end.

"When we retrieve the stone," Gamora said, "we should make an immediate effort to find sanctuary for it in a very remote,  _very_  safe place."

Quill reached out. "Let's see if any of the stones are actually here before we go making plans, okay?" He knocked on the door.

It took a moment. The Collector wasn't expecting them, after all, and was no doubt cautious of visitors. But eventually those doors swung open, allowing them to walk inside, and so that was what they did.

"Creepy," Rocket commented as the doors closed behind them and they were left in the entrance hall. There was a long, dimly lit hallway to one side that would lead to the showroom, and a few others that led to places they'd never been before.

"Showroom?" Quill guessed. "If we're looking for the stones, that's where they'll be."

"The Collector might be there too." Gamora looked to the others. "Come on. We have to speak to him as soon as we can."

They started down the hallway, a sense of unease growing among them as they stepped back into the place where they'd first seen the power of the soul stone. As they emerged into the showroom, they saw that it had actually been fully repaired—there was no telling it had been blown apart by an infinity stone and an overzealous attendant. All the specimens were perfectly back in place, lit by fancy displays with little notes about what they were and where they'd come from.

"Well this isn't eerie at all," Quill muttered, hand lowering to grip the handle of his gun in its holster. "Let's—"

"Are you looking for something?"

They all jumped out of their skin, the familiar drawl of the Collector sounding from behind them. Quill nearly drew his gun on the guy before he remembered who he was and why they were there, and that he wasn't likely to give up the stones if they shot him.

"Jesus, man!" Quill took his hand off of his weapon. "You have to make more noise than that; you scared us out of our skins!"

The Collector cocked his head. "Forgive me. I was not expecting… _visitors_."

"And we're sorry for intruding," Gamora said quickly. "However there is a matter of upmost importance we believe you can help us with."

"Surely you understand that nothing comes free these days."

"We understand. But please, hear us out. There is much at stake here."

_This isn't going to work,_ Quill thought, watching the unchanging expression on the Collector's face. The man didn't care about anything but his collection, and giving up the stones would be taking away from his collection. He wouldn't pay any mind to Thanos hunting him down and taking the stones by force, destroying the whole universe in the process.

The Collector turned away and stepped further into the showroom. "By all means," he drawled, "say what you will. Though don't expect to find me entirely complacent in your doings, with how our last interaction ended."

Right—the interaction where they'd both refused to give him the stone and stood by as one of his own attendants took it in hand and wrecked half his collection.  _That_  interaction.

The Guardians began to follow him as he moved, weaving past display cases packed with things both living and nonliving. His new assistant was nowhere in sight. Quill wondered where they were, if the man had even gotten a new assistant after the last one had destroyed so many of his showpieces.

"We're here for information, and maybe even more than that." Gamora bristled with agitation as the Collector didn't even look at her when she spoke, just kept walking. "There's an entire universe at stake— _this_  universe—and we think we might be able to delay or even stop it if you give us what we need."

"So it is to be an act of charity," the Collector said smoothly.

"It's the act of saving the entire universe from Thanos!"

The Collector tensed. "Ah."

"What? What is it, was he already here?"

He paused for just a beat too long. "No, of course not. What would a being like Thanos want with someone like me?"

Quill snorted, "Don't play stupid. You were trying to get your hands on an infinity stone for your collection; I'm sure he thought you might know how to get more."

Gamora glared at him—she'd wanted him to go in with more tact than that. The others just looked tense, like they were waiting for the Collector to react poorly and attack them or something.

But the Collector didn't seem alarmed. He just raised an eyebrow and said, "Is that why you're here? Information about Thanos, or…the stones?"

"How about both?" Quill asked.

"For the right price, I might be persuaded to tell you what I know. But first, won't you be more specific? There's no use in payment if I don't know what you're asking."

"The  _stones,"_ Gamora snapped. "We want their locations."

The Collector laughed. "If I knew that, don't you think I would have  _collected_  them by now?"

"I don't know. You tell me."

He raised a brow. "Hmm. Well as much as I'd love to charge you for my services, I'm afraid I know nothing of where the infinity stones are located. I know that the power stone ended up on Xandar, of course, but the others…they remain hidden even to me."

"Yeah, I'm  _sure_  they do." Gamora stepped forward threateningly, and Quill had to get in between her and the Collector fast before she put a few holes through him.

"Woah, woah!" he protested. "Let's not stab each other, okay? Just—seriously, let's not."

"He knows the locations of the stones!" Gamora bit out. "He's just not telling us because he's holding a grudge for last time!"

"Hey, calm down!"

The Collector merely shook his head. He'd stopped walking, stopping in the middle of a seemingly random corridor, and he seemed unwilling to move any further. "You might be correct, if I actually knew the location of the stones. The last time you were you led to the destruction of a large portion of my collection, and it's entirely possible that I would have refused to help you even with the promise of payment. However the fact remains that I do  _not_  know where the infinity stones are located."

_"Liar!"_

Quill moved to hold Gamora back again, but Drax was already stepping in between them. Mantis rocked back and forth on her heels nervously, watching the whole exchange.

"Sheesh, can't you control yourself for three lousy minutes?" Rocket said. Then, to the Collector, "If you don't know where the stones are they we—"

Quill raised his head. "Hang on! Look, man—I know you don't want to help us, and it's possible that you're telling the truth and you really don't know where the stones are. But at least let us explain why we're looking for them."

"I told you that I was listening, and I still am. Please, continue—though it will not change the fact that I don't know where the stones are located."

"Great." Quill shot Gamora a look. "Think you can explain  _calmly_ why we want the space rocks?"

She took a deep breath. "Yes, I…I'm sorry." She pulled away from Drax and straightened her clothing. "Tivian, you know better than anyone how powerful the stones are. You know that wielding even one can end in cataclysmic acts of death and destruction, and that to wield more than one has never even been  _attempted_ due to the stones' sheer power. But theoretically, if one being were able to hold more than one at the same time…"

The Collector's expression turned grim. "The universe would be destroyed. Yes…I see."

"Well Thanos is someone who can do that. He means to hold  _all_ of the stones, and use them to destroy half the life in the universe with a single click of his fingers."

"We're talking universal calamity here," Quill threw in. "If that guy gets his hands on the stones, we're all screwed."

Gamora nodded and said, "Which is why we need your help to find them. We already have one contained, as you know. But the others are gone—and you know too much about the stones to not have any idea where they are."

"I know about them, yes. But that knowledge does not extend to their locations. I have only ever seen one, and you were there when it occurred."

_Okay,_ Quill thought,  _I'm calling bullshit on that._ There was no way that the Collector, someone who seemed to know  _everything_ about the stones, had only ever come into contact with  _one_. Some of his knowledge had to come from experience.

"Please," Gamora said. "Even if it's just a lead, a rumor,  _anything…_ we need to hear it. We need to find the stones and get them away from Thanos fast."

"You care about your collection, right?" Quill asked. "Well half of it is made of living beings, and if Thanos wipes out half of all living beings you're probably looking at like a quarter loss."

Drax snorted, "Impressive calculative abilities for one of your mediocre intelligence."

_"_ I'm not an idiot, that was simple math!"

"Boys!" Gamora positioned herself in between the two, annoyed. "Not now."

"But he's right, isn't he?" Mantis asked nervously. "Much of this collection would be destroyed, should Thanos find all the rocks!"

"Stones," Gamora corrected, "and yes."

The Collector gave no response, but he tensed just slightly. No doubt he was taking in the possibility that his collection, having just been damaged some few months previously, might be damaged even further. Hell, he might even die along with his collection!

Quill took a step forward. "Look, man, I know you love your collection and all that. But this right here concerns the entire  _universe_. We'll do whatever we can to pay you for any information you have. Even if it's just an unconfirmed lead, a rumor…anything at all! We just need somewhere to start."

The Collector paused, then, and there was this moment where he stared at them and said nothing and narrowed his eyes as if deep in thought. Then he seemed to reach some kind of decision, because he opened his mouth and said, "This is all very touching but does not change what I know about the stones' locations—which happens to be nothing."

"Come  _on_ ," Rocket spoke up, bristling. "We traveled all this way and you don't know  _anything?"_

"It's not my fault you assumed I would have the answers."

Irritation bubbled up in Quill's chest, and he took a frustrated step back. "You know what? We're wasting our time here. This idiot is clearly set on letting half the universe die before he tells us what we need to know."

The Collector said, "I truly don't have the information you require. Though I will say that even if I did, I'm not sure I would believe what you're telling me now. How am I to know that it isn't some elaborate scheme to get your hands on the stones, which I aim to collect?"

"If you aim to collect them, you  _must_  know something of their locations!"

"And I'm assuring you that I do not."

Quill groaned. "This is going nowhere, guys. We'll just need to find a lead elsewhere."

"I'm not done!" Gamora reached for the hilt of her sword, but Quill beat her to it. He grabbed her wrist and held tight.

"Get off of me, Quill! This man knows the locations of the stones and I'm going to—!"

"He doesn't know," Quill said, keeping his back to the collector so he couldn't see his face. "We'll just have to leave and try to find them on our own."

"But—!"

" _Trust_  me. We're not done." He winked at her, even though he wasn't sure she'd understand what he was getting at. If the Collector wasn't going to give them the information willingly, they'd have to come back and see for themselves if he was telling the truth.

Gamora paused. She looked between Quill and the Collector as if deep in thought, but evidently understood what he was saying because she nodded and yanked her hand from his. "Fine! We'll leave."

"Woah, what?" Rocket protested. "We're just going to walk away without making  _absolutely_  sure this asshat is telling the truth?"

"Trust me," Quill repeated. "We'll do better without him. Let's go back to the ship."

_"Without—?"_

Quill spoke right over him. "Thanks for the chat, Tivian, but we've got shit to do." Then he was walking, motioning for the others to follow him. Though all but Gamora seemed confused and reluctant (Quill thought she'd probably figured out what he was getting at), they followed as he led them back through the showroom.

"Quill, what the hell?" Rocket burst out as soon as they were walking back down the stairs toward the Milano. "That guy had to know something, you said it yourself! Why are we just walking away?"

"We're not." Quill put down the ramp and made his way back into the ship. "Come on, we have to take off and make it look like we left."

Drax cocked his head. "Why? Just what are you getting at here?"

"I'm getting at a heist, dude! Haven't you ever seen a movie about—?" Then he paused, clicking his fingers. "No, of course you haven't. Forgot who I was talking to."

Rocket looked interested. "Woah, woah! Are you talkin' about breaking back into the showroom after the Collector thinks we're gone?"

"That's exactly what I'm talking about," he said. "Think about it! The guy obviously knows something, and maybe we can figure  _out_  what he knows if we slip back in there when he's gone!"

"I like the way you think!" Drax declared. "No more diplomacy, only battle!"

"No, no battle!" Quill yelped. "We want to be stealthy, man! Slip in, see if we can learn anything, get out before he realizes what's up!"

"He must have security," Gamora pointed out. "How are we going to get around it?"

"Well…" Quill sighed, running a hand through his hair. They really had no idea how extensive the Collector's security system might be, and going in blind was dangerous. How could they combat a system they didn't even understand?

"Well this genius is obviously tapped," Rocket said, "so how about  _I_  do the plan?"

"What did you have in mind?" Mantis asked, wringing her hands. "It could be dangerous, going in there without anything!"

"And  _I've_  got a good plan!"

"Rocket…" Gamora narrowed her eyes. "This plan wouldn't happen to involve blowing down the doors and storming the showroom, would it? Because I thought we established that we were going for  _stealth."_

"…I've got  _two_  good plans!"

Gamora pinched at the bridge of her nose. "That's what I thought." Then, to everyone,  _"I_  have a real plan. We can't realistically expect to know everything Tivian has up his sleeve, but I was watching the showroom carefully. There are cameras, for one, and there are varying apparatuses on the wall that I believe can sense movement. If we disable those security features, we should be safe."

"And how are we going to do that?" Drax questioned. "Should we smash them?"

"That would set off alarms. I believe the safest option would be to send in someone to find the security room and turn off the cameras and the sensors."

Quill frowned. "You don't think the rest of the place is full of cameras too? We could be spotted the instant we step inside."

"We have to take that risk." Gamora looked back at the entrance to the showroom, expression grim. "I feel confident that this man knows something, and his knowledge could mean the difference between saving the universe and seeing it decimated by Thanos."

And really, there was no way to dispute that.

Gamora turned back to them and said, "I'm the fastest, the quietest, and the most suited to stealth missions. I can go in and take care of disabling security, then meet you in the showroom. Wait for my signal to go inside, but once you're there don't hesitate to tear the place down looking for answers. Just so long as you're  _quiet_."

"Yeah,  _tearing things down_  and  _quiet_  aren't really compatible."

"Then  _make_  them compatible!"

Quill raised his hands. "Okay, okay! We're all on board with your plan, so let's get this ship out of here and land somewhere the Collector won't see us."

Gamora gave a sharp nod and pushed past him, moving further into the Milano. "Make it fast, Quill. We have no idea how close Thanos is to finding the other stones."


	3. Sick of It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy the next chapter, and thanks for the kudos, bookmarks, etc! I'd love to hear from you guys if you're enjoying so far.

Their plan went into effect that night, after they found a good place to land the Milano and camp out for what equated nightfall on the dead celestial's head. No one was entirely pleased to be breaking into a showroom that could be heavily guarded, but they all knew the stakes. Thanos could already be after the other stones and they would have no idea. They had to move  _now_.

_"I'm going in,"_  Gamora whispered over the coms.

"Good luck," Quill responded from his position crouched behind the grand staircase leading to the Collector's home. The others were with him except Groot, who had been left on the ship so he couldn't blow their cover. All they had to do now was wait for Gamora to turn off the security system and open the showroom for their investigation.

"Do you see anything strange?" Quill asked as Gamora trekked further into the home. "Any guards, cameras, security measures…?"

A pause. Then,  _"I don't see anything. I'm searching for the security room now. Surely there will be one_ somewhere _…_

Everything fell tense and silent as Gamora searched. They were all well aware that they could be detected and attacked at any moment, and everyone was wondering when the other shoe would drop. Or,  _if_  it would drop. Maybe even if this whole thing was worth it in the first place, seeing as they didn't know for sure if the Collector even knew where the other stones were located.

After what felt like years, Gamora spoke up.  _"I've found what looks like a security room, and I'm moving in now. Oh—there's a guard, give me a second."_

There was the sound of flesh hitting flesh, the crack of bone, and then Quill was wincing as Gamora spoke again.

_"I'm at the console. I'm not familiar with this system, but I think if I do_ this _I might be able to turn everything off and avoid setting off the alarms."_

When a moment passed and no alarms blared, Quill assumed she'd succeeded. "Well that was suspiciously easy."

"Maybe not so suspiciously," Drax said. "He seemed a very foolish man."

"Did it seem that way?" Quill wasn't so sure. But Gamora was whispering for them to move in before someone realized something was off, so he got to his feet and moved up the staircase as fast as he could without making too much noise.

All the lights were off in the hallway leading to the showroom, so they had to blindly fumble their way to the door. Drax nearly knocked over some kind of vase, which would probably have been loud enough to wake someone up, but Mantis saved it at the last minute and prevented disaster. Quill was glad they'd left Groot behind, because he'd been feeling rebellious lately and probably would have knocked it over just to hear it shatter.

Quill's hand settled on the door, and he felt for the latch. Then he clicked it open and pushed into the showroom, and they were right where they needed to be.

No alarms went off. So Quill raised a hand to his ear and whispered, "Gamora, think you can turn on a few lights in here?"

_"Hang on."_

There was a soft click, and then a few of the lights on the ceiling were flaring to life. Not enough to be noticeable to someone on the other side of the door, but enough to give them something to see with.

_"I'm on my way. Start looking."_

So that's what they did. Quill started off to one corner of the room, the others weaving off in opposite directions, and began to look. He wasn't really sure what he was looking  _for,_ but he thought he'd know it when he saw it. Hell, maybe he'd even see an infinity stone on display! It wasn't likely; the Collector probably would have sealed any stone away from sight, but it was just possible enough to set him on edge as he searched.

_Not here…not there, either._ He stepped past some weird display of weapons, then jumped as he saw some kind of animal glaring at him from its cage. He didn't like this place. He just wanted to find the information or the stones and get out of there.

_"I've got nothing,"_ Rocket reported. "Any of you losers got something better?"

_"Nothing here!"_  Mantis said.  _"Sorry!"_

_"I have also come up with nothing,"_  Drax said.  _"Perhaps part of the problem is that we don't know what the infinity stones look like."_

"Oh, come  _on,"_ Quill said, disbelieving. "They're glowing rocks, guys! Look for the glowing rocks!"

_"Yes, but how do we know they won't be concealed within something else? If I had an infinity stone, I'd want to put it within a mighty weapon!"_

"Then look for a weapon with a glowing rock in the center!" Quill turned a corner, but there was nothing down that isle either.

_"Will the glowing rock be prominent?"_

"I don't know, I've only ever seen the purple one! Gamora, are they all different?"

_"They're different colors,"_ she said,  _"but all of the same make. You'll know them when you see them—or feel them. They tend to have an aura, when they're not being muted by some kind of casing."_

"Great, then we know what we're looking for." Quill turned yet another corner.

Rocket huffed. "Geez, this place is like a maze!" And someone responded, but Quill wasn't paying attention because something had just caught his attention.

A broken display case at the end of the corridor, where all the others were pristine.

He frowned, making his way toward the shattered glass. The case even had its own special light, casting a dull red glow over its center. The center, Quill noted, that was devoid of anything actually on display.

"Weird," he muttered, peering into the case. There was this circular indentation in a cushion, resting at the bottom of the case as if something spherical had once been displayed there. And more than that, the entire case was surrounded by this sense of  _power._ Like not that long ago, something with immense energy had rested there.

Something clicked in Quill's mind, and he buzzed with a mixture of fear and excitement. "Hey guys, I found—!"

Alarms blared.

"What the hell?" Quill yelped, leaping away from the case as if he'd been burned. "I didn't even touch it, I—!"

_"It wasn't you,"_  Gamora said over the coms, sounding about half a step away from murdering someone.  _"I just walked in and saw Drax punch a hole in a case."_

Rocket yelled, " _I'm sorry,_ what?"

_"It looked shiny!"_ Drax protested, though he sounded guilty.  _"I thought maybe there was a stone inside!"_

"And instead of calling us you decided to punch it open?"

_"It was shiny! And from the angle I was at, it could have been construed as a stone!"_

Gamora said,  _"It was a_ plant,  _Drax!"_

_"I thought—"_

"No time for that!" Quill called, already looking for the guards or traps or whatever the Collector would have sent after them once the alarms went off. "We have to meet up and get out of here!"

_"Head to the center of the showroom!"_

Quill took off in that direction, dodging displays and leaping over anything in his path. The tall walls separating each section of the room made it difficult to navigate, but soon enough he was touching down back where the Collector had spoken to them earlier that day. Gamora was already there, pacing back and forth and wrought with nervous tension, and soon enough Rocket was flying over the nearest wall and landing with a huff.

"We're here!" Mantis called. She appeared with Drax in tow, bouncing nervously, and looked to Quill and Gamora for guidance. "What are we going to do?"

"Get out of here," Gamora said sharply. "Stick together, keep an eye out for traps or guards, and—"

Something shrieked, inhuman and ear piercing and downright horrifying, and they all jumped.

"Go _, now!"_  Gamora snapped.

They ran.

Quill could hear it behind them. Some kind of a monster, large and loud and fierce, skittering up the walls and lunging toward their retreating backs. He didn't want to look back and see it following them, trying to kill them.

…But he was still Peter Quill, and so of course that was what he did.

"Oh my god! Guys, it's  _huge!"_

"Keep moving!"

The monster—this large, furry thing with four legs and dripping fangs and a dog-like face—climbed the walls and roared and tried to leap in front of them. It roared again, and Mantis screamed.

"What the  _hell_  is that?" Rocket yelled, ducking to one side as it bore down upon them. The thing pushed off the wall, slashing at them the whole way down, and landed in the exact right place to scatter them in all directions.

Quill gasped as he hit the ground hard, already firing up the thrusters on his boots to avoid being clawed to death as the thing sprang at him. "That would be the guard!" he called. "Scatter!"

Gamora brandished her sword at the creature, catching its attention and drawing it in her direction. "No, get to the door! We have to get out of here before the Collector arrives!"

"Gamora—!"

She yelled, throwing herself down as the monster dove at her. She caught it with both legs and let its momentum carry it behind her, where Rocket was ready to pepper it with gunfire. The creature roared, lashing out at nothing in its confusion, but the lasers didn't seem to do anything but singe its fur.

"Thick skin!" Rocket said. "Let's see if this works better!" He started firing, and glass started to shatter around them.

"Rocket!" Quill yelled over the noise. "You're wrecking the place again!"

" _Again?_ I didn't wreck it the first time!"

"Look, just—put the thing down without breaking shit! We don't want to make the Collector any madder than he'll already be when he finds out we're here!"

Drax drew his daggers and made as if to attack the thing. "Step aide;  _I'll_  take care of this."

"Wait, don't—!"

But he had already leapt at the beast, weapons raised, crashing right through another display case on his way to get absolutely trampled by the thing. Because of course, that was what happened when someone just lunged recklessly for something far larger than he was and with way sharper claws.

" _Drax_ , you idiot!"

Mantis reached out and yelled, "I've got it!" But then she was blown back by a flailing limb, where she cracked another display case and stayed there, dazed.

"Oh, come  _on."_ Quill put down his helmet and burst into the air, guns drawn. "We've put down a god but this stupid thing is flinging us all over the place?" He took careful aim, fired, and winced as the shot veered to the left and cracked into some kind of relic.

Gamora sheathed her sword and leapt up onto a glass case twice her size. "Fine, I'll do it myself!" She narrowed her eyes, waited, then launched herself forward and just managed to grapple onto the creature's neck as it took a swing at Rocket. She grabbed hard around its throat, pulled as hard as she could, and the thing roared in pain.

Quill saw his opening. He fired once, twice, three times at the beast's stomach, and it whined and writhed as the soft skin of its underbelly was burned and split open. It thrashed, cracking Gamora into the nearest display, but she clung tight and constricted her arm around its neck.

"Hold it still!" Rocket fired several more times. Drax shot forward and sliced, cutting at the already sensitive flesh of the creature's stomach, and blood flowed. Gamora held tighter, Quill fired one final time, and it was over.

The beast fell to the ground and stayed there, blood flying everywhere as its eyes rolled back in its head and its chest stilled. Gamora, practically coated with the stuff, cringed as she extricated herself from the corpse and shook herself off.

"Well  _that_ was pleasant," she said drily. "Drax, is Mantis okay?"

"I'm fine!" she called, though she looked a little woozy as Drax helped her to her feet. "We really made a mess of the place! How unfortunate…"

"I don't think we'll be invited back," Quill agreed, looking around. Blood was everywhere, shattered glass stretched for what seemed like miles, and more display cases than he could count had been bashed in. It seemed that they'd ruined a part of the Collector's showroom for a second time.

Rocket landed beside them, tucking his weapon away. "Who cares? Let's get out of—!"

There was a clatter in the doorway, then a horrified gasp.  _"What_ is going on here? My guard! My—my  _collection!"_

_Oops._ Quill winced as he saw Tivian standing in the doorway, no doubt having come down to see if his guard had killed the intruders yet. But of course, all there was to see was the endless stretch of wrecked display cases and shattered artifacts.

"Yeah, uh, sorry about this." Quill waved a hand at the destruction sheepishly. "We were just trying to find the stones!"

The Collector stared at them in abject horror, frozen in place.

"Yes," Gamora said flatly, "it is truly a tragedy that we wrecked your showroom while trying to save the universe. You have our sincerest apologies."

"The—the infinity stones?" The Collector waved his hands, a mixture of furious and terrified. "How many times do I have to tell you,  _I don't know where—!"_

Gamora grabbed at the hilt of her sword, turned, and cracked the blade into a relatively unharmed display case.

_"No!_ Stop that, I have no idea where they are!"

"I don't believe you." Gamora yanked the sword out and turned, shattering another case and running the blade through some kind of strange vase positioned in the center. "You'd better start talking, Collector, or I'll keep smashing."

Quill stared, eyes wide. "Woah, woah! He obviously doesn't…" But then he trailed off, remembering that strange indentation that had emitted such an incredible aura of power. An infinity stone had rested there, and not long ago. He could feel it.

Gamora raised the sword again. "Last chance, or this case goes."

"No,  _wait!_  Please, I really don't know!"

"I think you do," Quill said, jumping in before Gamora could start smashing. "What's with that case in the back, huh? The one with that spherical indentation right in the center, the one giving off a vibe  _exactly_ like the power stone."

The Collector froze.

_Got you._

Gamora raised a brow. "It sounds like you  _do_  know. Care to share, before I send the rest of this place up in smoke?"

"I've got enough explosives to blow this entire place to shreds," Rocket threw in, patting at a pouch on his belt. "So you'll want to make this quick."

The Collector bristled with nervous tension, looking between them. But the instant Gamora raised her sword to the nearest case, he caved. "All right, all right! Lower your weapons and I'll tell you all I know."

Gamora put her sword down.

The Collector pinched at the bridge of his nose. "Yes, I  _did_  have another infinity stone. The reality stone. But two weeks ago there was a break in, and two Asgardians made off with it."

"Who were they? Which direction did they go?"

"I don't know which direction they went in, but I do know that they left in a grand ship with no other crew. Incidentally I also don't know who they were. One was large and blond, the other wiry and pale, and they fought like a hurricane birthed by a supernova. They took the stone and left, and there was nothing I could do to stop them."

Quill shot a look at Gamora. "Agents of Thanos?"

"Let us hope not, or my father will have acquired his first stone by now."

Quill looked back to the Collector. "What else do you know? Locations, rumors, anything you think will help us. Are there any other stones here?"

"No," the Collector said. Then, when Gamora raised her weapon, "I said  _no!_ There aren't any more here; I only ever had the reality stone! And of course the power stone, for that brief moment before you snatched it away from me. The others…" He trailed off, shaking his head. "I haven't been able to acquire them."

"Rumors, then. Possible locations."

The Collector didn't look pleased, but he seemed to understand that he had no choice if he didn't want Gamora to start smashing. " _Fine_. The other stones remain a mystery to me, but I do have a lead on the soul stone. Rumor is that it's ended up on Vormir, at the top of the tallest mountain."

"Vormir?" Rocket echoed. "Do we know where that is?"

Gamora nodded. "I do. It's a cold, miserable planet at the edge of the galaxy, and we should hope that we have to spend no more time there than absolutely necessary."

Mantis raised a hand and asked, "If this rumor is so well known, will someone not have taken the stone already?"

The Collector shook his head. "There happens to be a failsafe to keep the stone from being removed by just anyone. No one knows quite what it is, but it must be strong to have kept the stone in that location for thousands of years."

"Something to look forward to," Quill joked, but no one laughed. "What about the others?"

"It's as I said—I have no leads. That's all I know."

"Are you telling the truth this time?" Gamora brandished her sword threateningly.

"Stop! It's the truth, I swear it!"

"Good. Because if you're not, we'll come back and burn this place to the ground."

Rocket's ears flicked. "Geez, intense much?"

She glared at him. Then, to the Collector, "We'll get out of your way."

Then they were, moving, Quill jogging to keep up as Gamora made for the ship. The Collector was staring after them shock and anger, no doubt wishing he could kill them then and there, but he made no move to do such a thing. He wasn't one to get his hands dirty.

"Woah, Gamora, slow down!" Rocket ran after her, having to move faster to keep up on his short legs. "We have the location, we can relax for a minute!"

"We can't let our guard down," she said firmly. "If those two Asgardians were working for Thanos, he might already have the stone. And even if they weren't, there are two people out there with something more powerful than anything else in the universe. We can't delay in securing the other stones."

"Gamora—!"

But she was already pulling ahead, moving for the ship with grim determination.

They were on their way to Vormir.


	4. The Mountain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dream sequence in this chapter definitely won't make as much sense if you haven't read the other parts, so again, don't hesitate to ask me questions if you get a little confused! Honestly at this point I feel like I've left enough clues for everyone to figure out where this series is going, but I guess we'll see!
> 
> Enjoy!

That night, Quill dreamed.

At first it was the usual stuff—flickers of his mom, of his old life on earth, of being abducted. Then flashes of his missions. He'd see Yondu snapping at him over a failed assignment, or lasers streaking his way from the barrel of a too-close gun, or even the ground rising to meet him as one of his thrusters failed. All things he was used to reliving.

But then—a shift.

It was hazy. Dark and hot and disorienting, like a fever dream. One minute he was watching Yondu firing at a blurry alien, and the next he was floating in the ether.

_What…?_ He reached out, confused, but nothing met his searching fingertips.

Until,  _color._

He felt like he was falling. The world spun around him, and he saw the void morphing. A flicker of purple blinded him momentarily, whistling away into the darkness. Then a flicker of blue, lighting up the void—and this time, just for a moment, Quill could have sworn that he saw the outline of a large man with a hammer twirling in one hand. And again, as he stared, there came a flash of red. Also again, another outline—but this one of an entirely ordinary man with light in his palms and in his chest.

As he blinked, confused, a streak of green flew past him and collapsed into the outline of a person with a cloak flowing around his shoulders. Then two colors—yellow winding one way, orange winding another, each flashing into two more outlines. One with a cape, and one with a shield.

Quill was so busy watching in confused awe that he almost didn't notice when the colors flashed once, together, and flooded toward him in a wave that mixed and churned and blended until all he saw was a whirling rainbow of color. Startled, he tried to jump back—but his feet were glued in space as the tidal wave approached, and all he could do was watch in shock as the color approached, roared, and hit him like a brick wall.

Quill lurched awake in bed.

For some time after that he just stayed there, hand over his face, trying to puzzle through what he'd just seen. He'd recognized the purple of the power stone, but other than that…

He shuddered. Had…had he just seen the other five infinity stones? Or at least flickers of them?

_Maybe it was just a nonsensical dream,_ he thought when he was unable to make sense of things.  _Some bullshit fantasy my brain made up to…what, rationalize what's going on? That doesn't make any sense either; my brain isn't that smart._

Eventually he had to call it quits, because the others were already shuffling about and he knew that if he slept any later someone was going to come in and dump him out of bed. And by  _someone_ , he meant Gamora.

He rolled out of bed and got to his feet, taking a moment to straighten his hair in the mirror. Then he pulled on a fresh set of clothing, tugged on his jacket, and stepped out into the ship.

"No,  _no—_ Groot, how many times do I have to tell you to  _absolutely,_ under  _no_ circumstances,  _touch that!"_

"I am Groot."

"Wha—I don't  _care_ if it's pretty, it's a giant red button that  _can_  and  _will_ destroy the entire ship!"

"I am Groot!"

_"You're going to kill us all!"_

Quill snorted, ducking around the two as they continued to bicker. He waved to Drax, who was meandering around what served as a sort of living area, then to Mantis, who was chattering about something that had happened back on Ego's planet. Both greeted him in return, but seemed otherwise occupied so Quill didn't linger.

He picked his way up to the cockpit. The ship was eerily silent in between rooms, long, cold corridors stretching for what felt like miles, and he shivered as he walked. There were no windows in the hallways for obvious reasons, but if there were he knew he would have seen the stars whistling by as they flew. They were finally approaching Vormir, being maybe twelve hours off, so they were still traveling at breakneck speed through space. Of course, that meant that everyone was bored and cooped up and approaching stir crazy. Not exactly a good combination, when they were on their way to collect one of the most powerful weapons in the universe.

Quill pushed his way into the cockpit, and was surprised to see Gamora sitting in his chair.

"Hey," he said, caught off guard. "What are you doing up here?"

"What are  _you_  doing up here?" she countered, not turning back to look at him. She seemed focused on the stars and planets whisking by in the distance. "The ship is basically on autopilot for the next twelve hours; there's no need for you to steer."

"No need for you to steer either." Quill picked his way to the front of the cockpit and settled into the chair across from hers. "But there you are, stealing my chair and messing with the controls."

"I'm not messing with anything." Gamora held her hands up for emphasis.

"Then the question stands—what exactly  _are_  you doing? There's not much to look at out there, in case you hadn't noticed."

Gamora frowned and looked down. She seemed sad, somehow, like there was something weighing heavily on her shoulders. Seeing as it was her dad they were trying to stop (and maybe even kill, if they were lucky), he wasn't surprised.

"My father could be receiving the reality stone as we speak," she said finally, and her tone was soft and subdued. "If those Asgardians were truly working for him, the galaxy could already be lost."

It was something Quill hadn't wanted to think about. Because yeah, Thanos was a really bad dude, and getting his hands on even one infinity stone very well could spell game over, and that was something that cut right to his core. He was terrified. But really, what was the point of that terror? It wasn't as if worrying about it could stop Thanos from getting the stone.

"He could already be on his way to claim the other stones," Gamora continued, and she seemed to shrink in on herself a little as she said it. "With that one stone, he'll have the power to collect the others—and if that happens he'll be able to destroy half of all living beings. A perfectly balanced universe, just like he's always dreamed of. How do we know it isn't already too late to stop him? How do we know he doesn't already have the reality stone, that he isn't already using it to find the others?"

"We don't," Quill said, because that was the truth. "He  _could_  already have the reality stone. And if that's true, then it's our job to make sure he doesn't get his hands on any of the others."

"I don't think you understand just how powerful the stones are. If he has one, we may already be doomed."

Quill raised a brow. "Well, yeah! But does that mean we're just going to give up trying to stop him?"

"…No," Gamora said with a frown. "But still, it's disheartening to think—"

"Then don't think! It works great for me!"

Gamora looked away quickly, and Quill thought she was hiding a smile. "It still has to be considered. I'm not sure there's anything in the universe that can stop Thanos with an infinity stone."

"Well…" Quill paused. Something about that strange dream was lingering in his mind. "How about someone  _else_  with an infinity stone?"

She looked to him sharply. "Fighting Thanos with another stone would entail bringing that stone right to him. He would kill the other wielder and take the second stone for himself."

"Oh, come on! You've seen firsthand how the power stone functions; why couldn't we take it and touch it to the ground of whatever planet Thanos is hiding on? It would kill him."

"He's not on a planet, he's on a ship—and if we did that, we would be killing however millions of innocent people were inhabiting the planet."

Quill fell silent. He couldn't help but feel that he was onto something there, but there was no use in pressing the subject until they actually  _had_ the power stone within easy reach. They'd have to go back to Xandar for that plan to even begin.

"There might be a way," Gamora said after a great stretch of silence. "A way to stop Thanos by using the other stones. But we'd have to be incredibly careful, and we'd have to make absolutely sure that he was never in a position to take a second one. If he did…it would truly be over. And of course, we would need to find people capable of wielding the other infinity stones."

He winced. He hadn't considered how difficult that might be. After all, he was half god and he would have died with the power stone in his hand if the other Guardians hadn't stepped in. It had been too close as it was. And then, they'd only held it for a few moments. To presume to use it against Thanos…or to attempt to find someone that could…

"We can consider it if we actually find the other stones," Gamora said. "Those Asgardians…I don't like the sound of them. If they found one, they might stand a good chance of finding the others. On top of that, the Black Order will be searching as well."

"So there's competition," Quill said, trying to make light of something very serious. "We're the Guardians of the freakin' Galaxy, we'll pull this off. Get the stones, use them to stop Thanos—"

"As a last case scenario," Gamora reminded. "We don't want to use them unless we have to; otherwise Thanos will be in a far easier position to thieve them from their wielders and destroy half the universe. It would be safer to hide them away in the furthest corners of the galaxy."

Quill put his hands up. "Okay, I get it! No taking the stones into battle against someone who's trying to collect all the stones, not unless it's absolutely necessary."

"In any case," Gamora said, "We can't worry about that now. Let's wait until we get the other stones— _if_  we get them—and then come up with some kind of plan to either take Thanos down or just delay the inevitable."

"Let's go with  _take Thanos down._  The other one is making me kind of sad."

Gamora smiled. "I would also like to choose that option. Let's hope that the odds are in our favor."

"Yeah," Quill said, returning her smile. "Let's hope that." Even though they were flying to an unknown planet that those Asgardians or the Black Order might already be  _on,_ running headlong into whatever twisted security system the soul stone had put in place for itself.

She glanced down at the navigation panel. "We've still got nearly twelve hours before we reach Vormir. You should relax."

" _You_  should relax," he countered. "Come on, let's go sit with the others for a while. You'll just drive yourself crazy sitting up here all alone."

"I should be here." Gamora fiddled with the navigation panel, looking busy but changing nothing. "In case something goes wrong."

Quill shook his head and said, "Nothing is going to go wrong. The nav system is good to go, and it'll sound an alarm if anything weird happens. You should take a few hours off, at least! You'll be no use to us exhausted from staring out the viewport."

"Perhaps if less were at stake…"

"If so much is at stake it's even  _more_  important that you get some rest. Come on, Gamora!"

She looked like she was going to protest for a moment, and Quill was ready to drag her out of the cockpit—or at least,  _try_ to drag her out of the cockpit for approximately three seconds before he was flipped and chucked to the ground and yelled at. But then she slumped and said, "Fine, you win. But only for a few hours! If Thanos has also heard this rumor, he could be anywhere around here. We don't want to be caught off guard."

"Navigation system," Quill reminded her. "It'll warn us."

"Until it doesn't." Gamora got to her feet, though she looked stressed. She kept looking out the viewport as if she expected to see Thanos's warship approaching at any second. "But I guess you're right; there's nothing I can do here. I'll rest."

That small victory was good enough for him.

 

* * *

 

After that, all they could do was wait.

They couldn't exactly come up with a plan when they had no idea what they were up against, so all they did was sit around and play stupid games and tell stories and then yell at each other when those stories devolved into everyone trying to one-up everyone else. Then they all slept for a few hours, made sure they had everything they might need when they ascended the mountain, and finally returned to the cockpit for the descent.

That was the first look Quill got at Vormir.

It looked like a wasteland. The entire planet appeared craggy and barren, heaped with mountain ranges in between long stretches of flat, empty rock. What few trees he saw were being nearly flattened by an intense, freezing wind.

"Looks cold," Quill commented as their ship cruised at high altitude.

Gamora gave a grim nod. "It's freezing. We won't want to linger here."

Quill looked back down at the landscape. The Collector had told them that the soul stone would be located at the top of the highest mountain, but this was an entire  _planet._ How were they supposed to know when they'd found that mountain?

Rocket tapped at the console and said, "I'm going to try a scan of this hellhole and see if I can locate the highest landmass. If it works, we'll be there in no time!"

So that's what he did. Quill sat there and watched as Rocket ran the scan, and as the scan pointed them in the right direction. Apparently there was some kind of massive landmass not too far from where they were, and they blasted toward it.

"It appears as though Thanos has not yet arrived," Drax observed, head turned to stare out the side viewport.

"Not personally," Gamora said, "but the Black Order or those Asgardians might be here. We'll have to watch carefully for them."

They neared the mountain soon after that. Quill knew it was the right mountain because it was  _massive._ The largest mountain he'd ever seen, stretching straight up into the sky and very nearly reaching the clouds.

"I guess that's the mountain," Quill said, craning his neck in an attempt to see the top.

Rocket leaned over the console to look at the thing. "Yeah," he said, "no landing at the top of that thing. Should we take the aero rigs and fly up?"

"We'll have to be careful," Gamora said. "The winds will get stronger and stronger the further we ascend, and the air will be thin. Flying the whole way won't be safe."

"Then we'll use strategic climbing," Quill said. "Climb a little, fly a little, get to the top of the mountain and get the soul stone."

"And watch for traps!" Mantis reminded them. "The Collector thought there would be security measures in place."

"Yeah," Rocket snorted, "security measures like the mountain itself?"

Gamora shot him a look. "There may very well be other traps in place. We have to be careful, as Mantis says."

Quill spotted an outcropping near the bottom of the mountain. "Let's put the Milano down and get going."

Things were tense as the ship began to land. The wind was whistling around the ship and creating this high-pitched, awful sound that penetrated all the way to the inside of the ship. A good portion of the outcropping crumbled when Quill tried to land on it. Luckily there was enough for the ship to balance on, but things were still touch and go for a moment as the Milano teetered. Then Quill fired the thrusters and moved the ship a few feet inward, and they were safe.

Rocket tossed them each an aero rig, affixing his own to his chest. "Suit up, idiots! We've got a mountain to climb. And Groot! You stay here and watch the ship."

"I am Groot!"

"I don't care that you want to come; you're still growing and you need to stay out of weather like this! You're staying behind, and that's final."

"I am  _Groot!"_

Rocket groaned, "We can discuss this later. For now, stay put!"

Groot looked more than upset, but still he settled into his chair and seemed willing to stay put for a while. Meanwhile, the rest of the Guardians made for the hold. They had a set of coats in the back for cold weather (though they were seldom used) and they pulled them on before grabbing the supplies they thought they might need and stepping out onto Vormir.

It was  _cold._ That was the first thing Quill noticed. The second thing he noticed was that the wind, even at their relatively low elevation, was whipping and whistling around them. It was enough to tug at his coat and nearly throw him off balance. The landscape was just as rocky and barren as the rest of the planet. Nothing around for miles except more rock.

"I'm glad I have fur," Rocket grumbled, squinting into the wind. "This is gonna suck."

"It will not be pleasant," Drax agreed, trying to pull the zip on his coat up further than its maximum height. "Are you certain we are unable to use the aero rigs to fly to the top?"

"If you want to die, be my guest." Gamora took a few steps forward and placed her gloved hands on the side of the mountain. "Does anyone have the rope?"

"Here," Rocket said, tossing her an entire duffel bag full of rope. "Eyehooks are in the bag too."

Gamora shuffled through the bag and pulled out one of said eyehooks, an iron spike with a loop on one end, driving it into the ground and securing it. When a few experimental tugs didn't break it loose, she reached for the rope and threaded it through the metal loop. Another tug proved it secure, and she nodded.

"What's the plan here?" Quill asked, watching as she attached the other end of the rope to her aero rig harness.

Gamora tested the strength of the rope and seemed satisfied. "I'm going to fly until I reach the end of the rope, then secure another eyehook and thread the rope through. Then I can attach another length of rope to both me and the hook and fly up another few stories to repeat the process."

"That's maybe the most insane thing I've ever heard get said." Quill tried to remember anything he'd ever been told about rock climbing. But there wasn't much there since rock climbing wasn't that important in his line of work, and he didn't have any better ideas. He understood Gamora's thinking—if they could secure lines of rope up the mountain, they could fly and use that rope as a tether to keep the wind from tearing them away from the rock. But actually  _securing_  the lines would be dangerous, even if Gamora was fixing herself to the ground with the eyehook and the rope. What if something came loose?

Rocket shrugged. "Looks good to me."

"Be careful!" Mantis called over the wind. "That looks very dangerous!"

"It's insane!" Quill repeated, reaching for Gamora as she made to start flying. "Hey, just wait a minute! You're going to get yourself killed!"

She yanked her arm out of his grasp and snapped, "The soul stone is up there and time is of the essence! We have to get there now, before the Black Order or those Asgardians show up to claim this one as well!"

"Yes, but killing yourself trying to climb the mountain isn't right!" Quill backed away, looking up the mountain for some other solution— _any_  other solution. Because he was not going to watch Gamora die trying to scale a monstrous mountain.

"I'm going," Gamora said, tugging just one more time at her rope. "We don't have time to argue!"

"It does seem rather unsafe," Mantis protested. "Perhaps we should take a moment to think before we—"

"There's no  _time_."

As they continued to bicker, Quill took in the rest of their surroundings. Something about the outcropping was striking him as rather  _intentional._ On the whole mountain, this had seemed the only place safe enough to land—so maybe, if he was lucky…

He traced his fingertips along the wall, looking for some kind of seam. Gamora and Mantis were still arguing in the background (and now Drax and Rocket had stepped in, each trying to explain why they should or shouldn't fly up the mountain like Gamora wanted), but he wasn't paying attention. He slowly traced his way down the outcropping, looking for anything that might indicate some sort of passageway. Surely, if there was something at the top of the mountain, there was a reasonable way to get to it.

He almost missed it. But as the other Guardians continued to argue, Quill's fingers finally slotted into some kind of crease in the rock. Something too smooth to be unintentional. He stepped back, squinted, and realized abruptly that he was looking at a doorway.

_Got you._

Quill wedged his fingertips back into the crease and pulled with all his strength.

The rest of the team fell silent as the sound of stone grinding on stone filled the outcropping, loud even above the wind as the stone door stuttered outward until a distinct doorway was visible.

Quill stepped back. "Ladies first."

They stared at him like he'd just unveiled the greatest secrets of the universe.

"Quill! I can't believe I'm saying this, but that was awesome!" Rocket ran up to the doorway and peered inside.

"Your insight is noted," Drax said, "but how do we know that place isn't a trap?"

"Or that it leads to the top of the mountain," Gamora threw in. She looked sour, like she'd  _wanted_ to risk her life flying up into high-speed winds.

Rocket looked back at them. "We can tell because you can  _see_ it leads to the top, geniuses. Come on, take a look!"

Quill stuck his head through the doorway and nearly gasped. It was  _beautiful._ This long, sweeping pathway that spiraled up and up and up until it reached the top. There was no ceiling. Rather, when the path ended Quill could see nothing but the dark, stormy sky. The mountain had a hollow cylinder carved right up through it, to help people climb to the top without having to scale.

Gamora still looked irritated, but there was no way to argue against the far easier path. "Fine," she said. "We'll take this way."

Quill stepped aside as she pushed past him, but only after reclaiming the first two eyehooks and raveling the rope. But her entire demeanor changed the instant she saw how peaceful the inside of the mountain appeared. She relaxed and slung the bag of rope over one shoulder.

"Not much wind in here, other than what flows in from the top." Quill took off for a moment to test if he'd be blown off course, but nothing happened. "We might be able to fly up."

"We  _will_ be able to," Rocket said. "But hey, don't we want to get there at night or something? You know, exploit the cover of darkness?"

"Yeah, but we also want to get there as soon as possible." Quill checked his aero rig just one last time to make sure the short flight hadn't thrown anything off. Seeing that it was okay, he went on, "It would be nice to have cover, but we could be racing against the Black Order. We can't waste time"

Gamora gave a sharp nod. "We'll want to get up there as soon as possible. But still, having cover will be important in case the peak is being monitored."

"How long do we have until sunset?" Quill stuck his head back outside, looking for the sun. It was already sinking below the horizon.

"I give it an hour at most," Drax said, following Quill's gaze.

Mantis looked to the others and asked, "Can we wait an hour? For security?"

"No," Gamora said without hesitation. "By the time we get up there and figure out what kind of security system is in place, it will be dark enough for concealment anyway. Let's go."

"Merciful as always," Rocket grumbled. "All right, let's get our asses up there and get the stone!"

They flew.

Quill felt the air grow thinner as they ascended, but it wasn't enough to become dangerous. So long as he kept his breaths measured, he was good to follow his friends up the inside of the mountain. It was a shame—the place was beautiful, cast with this cool light and lined with cobblestone, but he wasn't able to enjoy it. He was too busy worrying over the fact that they were about to blast into some kind of unknown danger.

They landed on the lip below the opening in the ceiling. Gamora was in the lead, followed by Quill and the others, and she waved them back as she peered from the top of the path.

"I don't see anything," she whispered. "Unless…"

She went quiet, and Quill tensed.

"There's some kind of structure out there," she said finally. "But no people."

"No sign of Thanos or the Black Order or anyone else?"

"No, nothing. I believe we're safe to head up."

So they exchanged glances, adjusted their equipment, and stepped out onto the top of the mountain.


	5. Black Order

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy the chapter!

The top of the mountain was freezing cold and windier than anything Quill had ever felt.

He drew his jacket tighter around himself and shivered. "Well Thanos isn't here, so that's a start."

"He could be here at any minute," Gamora countered. "Come on, let's start looking for the stone."

The Collector had told them that the stone would be at the top of the highest mountain on Vormir. Now they were there, but there was no infinity stone shining from an obvious display. He shouldn't have been surprised—after all, the Collector had also said that there would be a security system, a way of hiding it. Getting their hands on it wasn't going to be easy.

They spread out across the mountaintop, keeping low to avoid being blown away by the wind. The mountaintop wasn't massive, but it was still a lot of ground to cover while the wind was trying to blast them off into the void below.

"I don't see anything!" Rocket yelled over the roar of the wind. "It's all rock and ice up here!"

"It has to be something with this structure," Gamora said, fixated on the thing they'd seen from the lip of the tunnel through the mountain. The structure consisted of five large stone columns rising from the mountaintop, engraved with symbols Quill didn't recognize.

Quill ran his fingers over the symbols, but nothing happened. He almost expected the infinity stone to appear in the center of the structure if he did pressed those symbols in the right order, but that didn't seem to be the case. It was just a bunch of rocks.

"Anything over there?" Gamora called.

"Nothing!" Mantis reported, nearly slipping on the ice as she searched near the edge.

"Be careful!" Drax yelled. Then, to Gamora, "There's nothing here! Are we sure this is the tallest mountain?"

"The scan said it was," Rocket countered. "It has to be here somewhere, behind that security system Tivian talked about!"

But Quill couldn't see a thing. "Maybe Thanos already has the soul stone," he suggested, dread settling in his stomach as he said it.

Then, a voice.

"No one has the soul stone."

Immediately they were whirling around, weapons drawn, ready to fight the source of that unfamiliar voice.

"Stay where you are!" Quill snapped, training his guns on the figure standing at the place where the mountaintop gave way to empty space. He was— _floating_ , somehow, wrapped in this dark cape that hid his face. He didn't appear to be holding a weapon.

The figure cocked his head and made no move to advance. "No one has the stone," he repeated.

"How do you know?" Gamora demanded. Her sword was out and pointed in his direction, braced against the wind. "Who are you, and how did you get to the top of the mountain?"

"Are you working with Thanos?" Rocket demanded.

The figure lifted his head, and just the lower half of his face became visible.  _His skin is scarlet,_ Quill recognized, though he couldn't immediately pinpoint which type of alien this guy was supposed to be.  _And his nose looks like it was cut off._

"I am unfamiliar with the name," the figure said finally. "Understand that no one has climbed this mountain in some time, and I have not left. As for how I reached the top of the mountain…" He shook his head. "I suppose I simply appeared here after a series of very foolhardy decisions."

"And you haven't  _left?_ Why the hell would you stay here?"

"I lost a fight, you might say, and this is my punishment."

None of them lowered their weapons. They were waiting for the man to attack them, or spring some kind of trap, or otherwise prove himself the enemy.

But he didn't. He did nothing more than float there at the edge of the cliff and ask, "Why are you here?" Though there was something about him that made it seem like he knew full well why they were there.

"None of your business," Gamora said shortly. "Walk away and we won't have to make you."

The figure just shook his head again, seeming amused. "I'm afraid it's entirely my business. You're here for the soul stone, are you not?"

Gamora stiffened, and something like alarm sparked in Quill's chest. Who  _was_  this guy? How did he know about the stone?

"I'll take your silence as a yes."

"You'd better explain yourself," Gamora snapped yet again. " _Now_ , before—!"

"Calm yourself," the figure said, raising a hand. "I will explain. But first…" He drifted forward, unfurled his legs from the cloak, and set his feet on the ground. Then he reached up and removed his hood, and…

Quill cringed. "Yikes, man. I think you've got something…on your face…?"

He ran a hand over the top of his head, the flesh there hairless and scarlet. His nose was indeed carved away, as Quill had noticed a few minutes prior, and the whole thing gave him a very,  _very_  disturbing appearance. He'd never see another alien like him.

"I am the Stonekeeper," he said, ignoring Quill's tactless comment, "and it is my job to watch over the soul stone."

Mantis perked up. "So it  _is_  here! We didn't climb the inside of the mountain for nothing!"

The Stonekeeper didn't even pause. "It is my duty to stay here, at the top of this mountain, and see that the stone is not retrieved by anyone unworthy to wield it. A punishment, I suppose, for presuming to wield an infinity stone in life."

 _"You_  wielded—" Quill cut himself off before he could get going, though. He had a feeling that this guy could and  _would_  talk them all in circles unless they got to the point quickly. "So you're the security system for the stone," he said. "Does that mean you can tell us how to get to it?"

"Perhaps I could, if not for the fact that you are far too late."

Gamora narrowed her eyes. "Too late? What do you mean?"

"I mean that had you wished to retrieve the stone fifty years ago, I could have told you exactly how to do it. But now it rests with someone else."

Quill's blood ran cold. Someone else had just walked up and taken the soul stone  _fifty years ago?_  It could be anywhere out in the universe, with fifty years of travel!

"If the stone is gone," Gamora said through gritted teeth, "then why is its keeper standing at the top of a mountain on another planet?"

"I am waiting for it to return home. It was taken unjustly from this place despite my best efforts, and soon it will come back."

"And once it does, how might we go about retrieving it?"

The Stonekeeper pointed to the edge of the cliff.

Against his better judgment, Quill took a step toward the edge of that cliff and peered down. It was a long,  _long_ drop straight to the bottom, where there was a large circular platform with engravings all around it. They were too far away to be read, and Quill didn't even think they were in English, but he could tell they were there. And…at the center of the platform…

"The soul stone is picky about who is allowed to hold it," the Stonekeeper said. "Therefore it decided to set in place a failsafe that would stop anyone it did not approve of from taking it. The failsafe was meant to be a paradox, you see—but someone managed to find a way around it. Someone  _tricked_ it,  _ruined_ it, and I had no power to stop him."

"The failsafe," Gamora said. "What was it?"

"Simple, but impossible to bypass. In order to prove that the subject understood the power of the soul stone, they were required to sacrifice to it the thing they loved most."

"So…the cliff…" Quill looked back down. Now he was certain that the thing in the center of the platform was a body, preserved by the freezing temperatures and stuck in place by a delicate lattice of ice.

"It was meant to be a paradox," the Stonekeeper said sadly. "If the subject was willing to sacrifice what they loved most to obtain the soul stone, then obviously they loved the stone more than anything else. Meeting the stone's requirements would therefore be impossible. But…it is as I said. The people that came here fifty years ago found a way around it that not even I understand. All I know is that one moment the stone was safe, and the next it was being damaged and contained and whisked away to worlds unknown."

"So it really could be anywhere," Quill said, shooting Gamora a glance. "The soul stone and the reality stone are just floating around out there."

"Not good," Rocket muttered.

Drax tilted his chin up and demanded, "Tell us who these people were, and what kind of ship they flew!"

The Stonekeeper frowned. "Fifty years has blurred the details even in my mind. I'm afraid I cannot help you."

 _"Great."_ Rocket looked to the others and said, "This loon seems to think the stone is going to be back soon, so why don't we wait?"

"The stone may not return for an additional fifty years or far longer than that," the Stonekeeper corrected calmly. "The blink of an eye for me, but for you…"

Quill shot Gamora a glance. "We can't wait that long."

"But this is our only lead! Where are we supposed to go from here?"

Quill just shook his head, uncertain. "Asgard?" he tried.

"Yeah, right!" Rocket laughed wildly. "You know how elitist those pricks are, they won't let us anywhere near their planet!"

"We have to try, don't we?" Mantis asked. "If this Thanos person is as powerful as you say he is, we have to do everything we can to stop him!"

"Asgard is our best bet," Quill pressed. "Maybe we can describe those two Asgardians to the people there and see if anyone knows them or where they are. It's not like there are that many people there; it won't take long."

Gamora crossed her arms, uncrossed them, crossed them again. She looked frustrated. "Do you know anything about any of the other stones?" she asked the Stonekeeper.

He dipped his head. "I'm afraid the others are hidden to me. You're on your own."

"Well that's just  _great_." Rocket bristled, drawing his coat further around his shoulders like the cold was just then getting to him. "We climbed all the way up here for nothing! Come on, let's get our sorry asses back down the mountain and head to Asgard or whatever."

None of them wanted to leave without anything to show for their efforts, but there wasn't much they could do. It wasn't as if waiting there would make the soul stone come back, not within any reasonable frame of time. Their next step had to be shipping out to Asgard.

Gamora looked the least pleased of all of them, but even she understood the reality of their situation. "Asgard," she agreed bitterly. "Let's hope they allow us to explain why we're there before they kick us off their planet."

"Or that they're not on board with their little friends helping Thanos get his hands on the reality stone," Drax said.

"Right." Quill stepped away from the edge of the cliff and back toward the inside of the mountain. "Nice meeting you, random red dude, but we gotta get going here before—"

The wind shifted. From not far above, a strange sound rippled through the air.

Quill looked up. "Before  _that."_

Maybe two hundred feet away, a giant warship was hanging in the sky. It had been obscured by the clouds, the sound masked by the wind, but now it was close enough to become noticeable.

"We have to get out of here," Gamora said. " _Now_. That's a Black Order ship."

"Is that why it's shaped like a donut?" Quill tried to joke, but his voice was shaky. The size of that thing was terrifying; it was a miracle it was able to fly so high without being pushed around by the insane wind speed. It probably had something to do with the fact that  _it was shaped like a goddamn donut._

The ship tried to move in, but as soon as it got too close it seemed to almost  _bounce_ away from the mountain. Like there was an invisible shield in place.

"The top of the mountain is protected," Gamora realized. "There's a field around it to prevent someone from just flying up and taking the stone!"

"Then we'll have a little time before they can get up here," Quill said. "Come on, we have to go! We're not equipped to fight those idiots right now."

The ship tried again and bounced off again.

Rocket gulped. "I'll second that."

The team made for the opening in the mountain. If they were lucky, they could fly down to their ship before the Black Order disembarked and made it to their location. They weren't equipped to fight an entire ship of Thanos's lackeys; getting into a fight could be fatal.

"Hey, man, you should get out of here!" Quill called to the Stonekeeper, letting the rest of his team drop down into the inside of the mountain first. "These guys are seriously bad news; you don't want to be here when they show up. They'll kill you!"

The Stonekeeper's expression didn't change. "It is my duty to remain here. Nothing will change that."

Quill shook his head, filed with a mixture of exasperation and respect. "Good luck, then. You'll need it." Then he dropped into the mountain after his friends, landing on the spiraling path and preparing to fly to the bottom.

Except, the Black Order had spotted them on the mountaintop. And if they couldn't fly up, they were going to make sure that no one could fly down.

A nearly undetectable ripple of energy coursed through the air.

Quill tried to get his aero rig working, but nothing happened. Frowning, he slapped at it to make sure it was in place and tried again—and yet again, the thing wouldn't start. He looked up, opening his mouth to ask what was going on, only to see the others having the same issue.

"Okay," Quill said, unnerved. "I'll just carry you down one by one with the thrusters on my boots." But when he moved to fire them up, they weren't working either. "What the hell?"

Rocket flicked an ear and looked up, where the donut ship was no longer visible. "It's the Black Order," he guessed. "They must have hit us with something that shorted out our gear!"

"Then our ship might be damaged," Drax said. "What if we are unable get it started?"

"Then we'll have to run," Quill said. "But they might not have even seen the ship to hit it yet, so we'll just have to get down there the hard way and check for ourselves."

There was nothing else they could do. They took off their aero rigs and started jogging down the spiraling path to the bottom.

Of course, that was when the explosions started.

"What are they doing?" Gamora yelled, the shockwaves shaking the inside of the mountain so violently that a good bit of rubble began to dislodge from the walls. "If they want the soul stone, why would they destroy where it's located?"

Quill ducked a rock as it came tumbling from the ceiling, continuing to run. "Maybe they think they can just take it from the rubble!" he yelled back.

"Or maybe," Rocket called, "they think we have it and that they can take it off our lifeless corpses!"

That seemed the most likely option.

"The Children of Thanos are ruthless, cold beings," Gamora reminded them as they kept moving. "I don't know which have been sent here, but no matter what the combination we're in serious trouble! They'll bring this entire mountain down on top of us if we're too slow!"

 _And right now we're too slow, even sprinting at top speed._ Quill glanced down, saw the dizzying drop to the ground below, and stopped running.

"What are you doing?" Rocket shrieked. "Keep moving, you idiot, if you want to live!"

"No, no—we're too slow! Gamora, give me the rope bag!"

She threw it to him, though she looked confused. "You'd better have a good plan, Quill, or we're all dead!"

"I have the best plan, as always!" He opened the bag with shaking hands and drew out the largest eyehook, driving it into the stone and screwing it down so it was secure. Then he threaded the rope through, just like Gamora had done earlier, and threw the other end down to the bottom of the mountain's interior.

Gamora caught on immediately. "Drax, you're the largest so you go down first—now climb!"

There was no time to argue. Drax grabbed onto the rope and started alternating climbing and sliding down the rope to avoid completely obliterating the skin on the palms of his hands.

"Now Quill!"

He grabbed the rope, thankful for his gloves, and started making his way down. As another tremor shook the mountain, he could only hope that the eyehook didn't come undone and send them plummeting to their deaths. Luckily it didn't, so he kept a close eye on Drax and climbed down as fast as he could.

"Okay, I'm next—Mantis, go after me, and Rocket last!"

Rocket didn't even complain, which was a testament to how tense the situation truly was. Gamora latched onto the rope and started down, followed by the other two, and then they were all hanging in open air in the center of the mountain, struggling not to fall off the rope with every explosion outside. It sounded like the Black Order was using their ship to try and bring down the mountain.

 _Almost there…!_ Quill looked down, judged the distance short enough to not flat out die if he fell, and jumped the remaining portion of the rope. The landing hurt a bit, but then he was back on his feet and jogging after Drax to the entrance.

"The ship is still there!" Drax announced, as if Quill couldn't already see it. Behind them, Gamora hit the ground and moved to see for herself.

"I don't see the Black Order," she said in a low tone. "We'll have to make a sprint for the ramp of the Milano and get on board. If we're lucky, the ship will still be working."

Mantis and Rocket hit the ground running as the mountain shook. "Great," Rocket called, "then let's go!"

So after one last look around to make sure the Black Order wasn't waiting in ambush, they ran. They sprinted the short distance from the center of the mountain to the ship, and as they did Quill looked up and saw the mountain. Or, what  _remained_  of the mountain. The Black Order ship had blown the top nearly to pieces, and the blasts were growing lower and lower. They were trying to catch the Guardians on the way down and kill them—but they had no idea that there was a passage through the mountain's center.

The team crashed onto the ship and made for the cockpit.

"I am Groot?" Groot asked when he saw them, looking as terrified as Quill had ever seen him. He was pointing to the explosions, and not far beyond, at the top of the Black Order ship. "I am Groot!"

"Later!" Rocket snapped, pushing past him and jumping into the pilot's seat. Quill took the copilot's seat without argument and started flicking the right switches to start the ship up. And— _nothing_.

"Damn it!" Rocket yelled, slamming his fists down on the console. "This piece of junk is fried too! I'm not getting any of the systems to start up, not a single one!"

"There's no way to get it started?" Gamora asked, watching frantically as the Black Order ship began to circle around to their side of the mountain. They'd be spotted at any minute.

"None!" Rocket smashed at a few buttons, but nothing was responding. "Whatever that pulse beacon was, it fried all our electronics! This thing won't restart for at least an hour while it wears off!"

"Then we have to make ourselves scarce," Mantis suggested. "You know, hide until we can come back!"

Gamora shook her head. "The Black Order will see and destroy our ship, and then we'll be stranded here to die."

Rocket said, "Well we can't _sit_  here and wait for the ship to be functional again!"

"We also can't just leave my ship to be destroyed!" Quill protested. "Come on, guys, there has to be something we can do!"

The Black Order ship was growing ever closer, firing upon the mountain every few seconds. In not too long, they would spot the Milano.

Gamora took a deep breath. "Okay," she said, seeming to gather herself. "We need this ship to get off of Vormir. We can't do nothing, and we can't abandon the Milano—but we  _can_ distract the Black Order and draw them away long enough to get the ship running."

"That could be suicide," Drax said. "It's incredibly honorable of you to volunteer."

"Hey," Quill said, "she wasn't—!"

Gamora was already getting up, though, making sure her sword was firmly in its sheathe. "I know them best," she said. "I can draw their fire and lure them away from the Milano long enough for you guys to get it restarted."

"They won't fall for it if only one of us leaves!" Mantis pointed out. "They saw how many of us there were; they'll suspect a trick!"

"They probably didn't get a good enough look to know how many of us there are exactly," Gamora said. "If Rocket stays here, they won't notice. Groot can stay too, since they haven't seen him yet, and the rest of us can fan out and lead them away from the ship. Stay in contact, stay low once they've spotted you, and we'll be okay. Meet back here in an hour."

"It's risky," Quill said. "Aren't these guys the baddest of the bad?"

Gamora nodded. "They're highly trained assassins, all of them. Be  _very_ cautious."

That didn't instill him with much confidence. But with the Black Order's ship growing ever closer, none of them had another option but to go.

"Get the ship started as fast as you can," Quill said to Rocket. Then he turned and ran for the ramp, the other Guardians in his wake, and they were off.

They didn't even have time for goodbyes before they were running, trusting the Black Order to see them fleeing the mountain. Gamora keeled off to the left, Mantis to the right, Drax straight toward the donut ship, and Quill chose a direction in between the rest and sprinted as fast as he could. He knew that the Black Order would be sent to catch them at any minute, and they had to lure them far, far away from the Milano.

As he tore across the rocky landscape, the explosions along the mountain stopped. His heart leapt in a mixture of triumph and pure terror as he realized the ship had stopped firing on the mountain and had turned its gaze on  _them._

 _They think we have the soul stone,_ Quill thought, as Mantis screeched in fear. The ground about three feet away from her had just been ripped up in an explosion.  _They're not showing mercy._

He waited for more explosions to follow, but nothing happened. It seemed the Black Order had decided that firing on four small targets from a giant warship wasn't going to work, because a moment later there were four much smaller crafts emerging from the belly of the larger ship and zooming their way.

The donut ship was hanging there doing nothing, so Quill thought it was safe to say that it was untended—and that meant that the Milano was safe. Whether or not the rest of the  _Guardians_  were safe, on the other hand…

Quill lost sight of Mantis as she dove into a gathering of sparse trees and high rocks, trying to lose her pursuer and failing by a mile. Drax vanished beyond a wall of rock. On his other side, Gamora leapt straight up, grappled to the side of a cliff, and vanished over the top. And Quill, slightly nervous without the other Guardians in sight, did his best to focus on his own situation and get to cover before the smaller ship got close enough to shoot at him.

The landscape was rocky and barren and not exactly the best for cover, but Quill saw what looked like a dead forest not too far away. At the very least the trunks would slow the ship down, and the dried foliage might even conceal him long enough for him to circle around and make it back to the Milano within the hour.

He lurched to one side as the ship started firing, peppering lasers at his feet and very nearly striking him. He  _really_  wished he could fly. But he couldn't, of course, so he sprinted for the dead forest and slid the last few feet into the trees. Then, as the ship skittered to a halt and started firing at the decaying trunks, he started picking his way through as fast as he could.

He didn't look back. He just kept his head down and leapt over tree trunks and wove in between vines, tearing down foliage in his path. The forest was packed with rocks, and he ducked behind each one in hopes of breaking his pursuer's line of sight—assuming, of course, that they were still pursuing and he hadn't lost them already.

Soon enough, he got all the confirmation he needed.

He was sprinting, doing his best to avoid confrontation, when a spear went whistling through the trees and imbedded itself in a tree a few inches from his head.

 _Well,_ he thought through the terror,  _that could be useful._ He grabbed onto the hilt of the spear, yanked it out of the bark, and tore off through the forest. He had no doubt that someone was pursuing him on foot now, and if his blasters were as fried as his boots then he needed some way of fighting back.

_Come on, Quill. Think! Throw them off, make them think you went the other way!_

But that was easier said than done, when he had to run at top speed just to avoid being overtaken by an invisible enemy. If he stopped to set some kind of trap or try to find a place to hide, it was entirely possible he'd be immediately slaughtered.

So—what was he supposed to do in a situation like this?

The answer seemed simple, if not a little insane and a lot exhausting.  _Run in circles, going a slightly different way each time, until you've created enough paths that your pursuer can't tell which are new and which are old and which one you've decided to follow that time around. They'll be confused, and you can slip away while they're trying to figure out which of the dozens of paths you decided to take._

It was kind of an awful plan, and it made a lot of assumptions about his ability to keep ahead of the Black Order. But it was the only thing he could think of, and so he chose a path and kept running.

Behind him, his pursuer snarled and approached faster than ever.


	6. Wormhole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy, friends! I quite liked writing this one.

_"I need thirty more minutes! I'm starting to see responses from some of the minor systems!"_

Quill couldn't spare the breath necessary to answer Rocket, panting so hard he nearly didn't hear them in the first place. He felt like he'd been running forever, and although he knew that it had really only been about thirty minutes that didn't stop him from being downright  _exhausted._ His lungs burned, his head was throbbing, and his legs felt like they were going to give out at any second. But still, he knew he had to keep moving. Apparently this member of the Black Order ( _whoever_  they were) had a hell of a lot more endurance than he did, because they hadn't slowed down. Not in the least.

Quill gasped as a laser seared by just a few inches from his head, and he threw himself to one side to avoid it. There was a boulder there, and he hauled himself over it and lurched off in the opposite direction. He was beginning to think that his plan of running circles around his pursuer wasn't going to work. They could obviously still see him, after all, and losing them couldn't happen if they had eyes on him the whole time. They'd just follow him until he exhausted himself.

_Gotta come up with a plan._  He dodged more gunfire, jamming his spear into a half-decayed tree and yanking it down in the path behind him as he ran. Then he took a sharp left, weaving in between boulders, looking for any way he could pull away from his pursuer. Vaguely, he wondered if the others were still alive.

_Crack!_

Quill yelped as a set of lasers seared through the trees on either side of him, and the dead trunks crashed down directly in his path. A taste of his own medicine, apparently, because it was way too late to jump and he crashed right into the things.

_Oh, shit—!_

He rolled to one side to avoid being shot, struggling to get his feet beneath him as dust was kicked up all around. He could hear footsteps crashing in his direction, and he fumbled for the spear as  _some_  kind of defense. By the time he managed to get it up in front of him, his pursuer was lunging out of the trees and firing on him with abandon.

It was a miracle he didn't die then and there. He rolled to one side again, well aware that he couldn't run now that he was in such close quarters with his attacker, and did his best to stab the person—the  _woman_ , apparently—with his spear. But she leapt neatly over the sloppy strike and fired at him again, missing only by a hair.

The muzzle of the woman's gun met with Quill's line of sight, and he swiped without thinking. The point of his spear grazed the gun just barely and tossed the next laser into the sky, where it vanished above the clouds.

The woman snarled. "Stay still so I can  _end_  you!" She tried to fire again, but Quill pushed the spear up even further and aimed the second shot after the first. Now that he was facing her he was getting his first good look, and that look was  _terrifying._ He didn't know what species she was, but she had this pasty white skin and blue markings all over her face, matching her blue hair. And—was that some kind of headpiece, or were they  _horns?_

As it turned out it didn't matter whether they were horns or not, because they looked just as frightening as she whipped her gun to one side and tried to shoot him through the chest.

He lurched out of the way and kicked as hard as he could, nailing her in the shin with the metal toe of his boot. As she shrieked, pained, he struggled to his feet and got the spear in between the two of them. His thumb slid over some kind of button on the hilt, and he jammed it down. Electricity crackled.

The woman bared her teeth and made to shoot him, but Quill was ready this time. He lunged forward, slipping around her extended arm, and cracked the electrified point of the spear into her weapon. When she tried to fire it, nothing happened.

She snarled in disgust and threw the gun to one side, reaching to her belt and pulling out a metal rod that quickly expanded into a spear identical to the one Quill had stolen. When she thumbed the handle, it sparked with power.

"Oh,  _great—!"_ But Quill didn't get any further before he was yelping, snapping his spear up to prevent being stabbed and possibly killed. A foot swept beneath him, hooking his legs, and then he was on his back and striking frantically at the space above him.

The tip of the woman's spear jabbed into his shoulder, setting his body alight for just a moment, and he gasped pathetically in the aftermath. His fingers slackened around the spear just enough for the woman to crush his wrist beneath her boot and kick it out of reach.

A boot landed on his chest, and she aimed the point of the spear at his throat. "Which of your friends has the stone?" she demanded furiously, poised to kill.

Quill struggled to regain his breath after the brutal shock. "What," he rasped, "you can't find it yourself? You need a junker like me to—"

"I know who you are," she snarled, pressing harder on his chest, "and you are no  _junker_. I intend to kill you when I'm done here, make no mistake, but your cooperation will mean the difference between a swift death and one that hurts so badly you'll  _wish_ you could have died at the first blow. Now tell me who has the stone!"

"No idea, princess," he managed, then cringed when the point of the spear pressed close enough for a few sparks of electricity to jump between the metal and his skin. With his damaged arm he reached out slowly, subtly, in an attempt to grab the spear that had been kicked just out of his reach. The woman was so focused on him that she didn't notice. "I guess you know we were here to get the stone, huh? But both of us are about fifty years too late."

"What do you mean?" she demanded.

"I mean that someone grabbed the stone and took off way before either of our sorry asses popped out into the universe. Or at least, before  _I_  did—how old are you, exactly? The eye wrinkles are telling me at least sixty, but no one that old should have a body like— _ow!"_

She hissed, "You're lying. You're just trying to protect the stone's location."

"Yeah well I'm not smart enough to come up with that whole thing, so it's fair to assume it's the truth." He strained just a bit further, fingers searching the rocky floor. The spear met with his fingertips, and something like hope sparked in his chest. He reached as far as he could.

She stared at him, considering. "If you're lying to me—"

"Not lying, I promise!" He raised his other hand a little. "Scout's honor."

The woman's head turned to track the motion, and instinctually she drew her spear back just a little. And in that moment, Quill's fingers sealed around his discarded weapon he and took his opportunity.

He rammed the spear into the woman's breastplate as hard as he could, and she screamed as electricity seared through her. But of course when she tried to pull away she ended up jabbing  _her_ spear into Quill's already damaged arm, and he cried out in turn before he could swat the thing away from him.

Quill knew he had to work fast. But he was shaking from the lingering electricity, and fighting to get his breath back after sprinting for so long, so moving was a vicious struggle. He used all of his strength to twist one leg around the women's ankles like a hook, pulling hard and sending her down. His spear left contact with her armor just long enough for him to stagger to his feet, and then he was lurching over to her and stabbing down as hard as he could into the chink in between her breastplate and her shoulder guards. She lost her own weapon in the pain, and he grabbed it and thrust it hard into her abdomen.

_She's down for a moment,_ he recognized, as she writhed and struggled without success to pull the spears out of her flesh.  _Now—now I can run! I have to hide!_

His mind was a bit scrambled from the electricity, so it took him a few moments to figure all that out. But once he did he was turning and staggering off into the forest, leaving the spears behind to hopefully keep the woman down longer.

_Come on, where's somewhere to hide? There has to be something, and I don't have long!_  He shook his head to clear the dark spots in his vision and scrambled as fast as he could. He knew he had next to no time before the woman yanked out the spears, but he at least had a few moments and he needed to  _use_  them. He scanned the environment and tried to stay sharp.

_There!_

He skittered to a halt behind a massive boulder with a dip in the bottom. If he dug out the decaying leaves around the base, he could slip inside and cover himself up. It was risky, but running was no longer an option. He was reaching complete exhaustion.

Quill glanced behind him, scattering the leaves to cover his tracks. Then he scrabbled to clear the dead foliage from the dip in the boulder, the soggy material giving easily beneath his fingers and creating a hollow just barely big enough for him to squeeze into. He wormed his way inside and made himself as small as possible in the dark gap, reaching out to pile leaves over himself. He could only hope that he'd done a good job from the outside, as he couldn't see how his scrambling had left the forest floor. As an afterthought he shifted his hand and cleared a tiny gap for him to see through, one too small to notice from the outside but large enough for him to be able to tell when the woman had passed him by.

Assuming, of course, she didn't find and kill him.

_Oh—and my communicator!_ He turned it off quickly. He'd seen enough movies in his few years on earth to know that if you were hiding, you would absolutely be given away by a communicator going off at the exact wrong time.

It was just in time. Because just as he settled down and held his breath to prevent the leaves from shifting, he heard the footsteps approaching.

He stayed very quiet as the woman crashed into view, holding both spears with one hand and letting the opposite arm—the one Quill had stabbed—hang limp. She looked downright murderous.

"I know you're out there!" she yelled. "You weasel, thinking you can slip away when we both know this ends in your death!"

Quill had to struggle not to jump and give his position away. This chick was  _terrifying._

She snarled, stabbing the spears into the ground and leaning on them as she lurched forward. Prolonged electrocution had definitely taken its toll. "I'll find you!" she roared. "Even if you're covering your tracks, I'll—!"

Something beeped, and Quill's stomach lurched in fear before he figured out that it wasn't coming from him, it was coming from  _her_. She raised a hand to her ear to answer her own communicator.

_She really doesn't know I'm here,_ Quill thought, darkness of the rock and the mush of the leaves had disguised his location, and she thought the leaves were scattered all along the path because he was trying to cover his tracks as he ran. She thought he'd fled further into the forest.

"What is it?" she snapped into her communicator. "The human male escaped; I'm in pursuit now!"

Quill kept extremely quiet, hoping to hear the person on the other end of the line, but he couldn't pick up a thing.

The woman growled, and Quill knew she wasn't being told something she liked. "I know we're on a tight schedule; I'll be back as soon as I find this whelp and grind him into dust! I don't think he has the stone…he told me that someone had taken it long ago, from the top of the mountain."

The person on the other end responded, but once again Quill couldn't hear it.

"We  _will_ find the soul stone. The Collector told us it was here and it must be! We will retrieve it and meet Thanos on Xandar to retrieve the next target."

Quill's blood ran cold.  _Thanos is on Xandar to retrieve some kind of target? But what could possibly be there that he would—_

He froze _._

_The power stone_. The power stone was on Xandar.

Quill shuddered, then cringed as he feared the leaves might have shifted. But there was no reaction from the woman, so he was free to panic silently over the fact that Thanos was moving to attack Xandar. If a frontal assault was on the horizon, the Guardians needed to get back there  _now_ and warn them to move the stone off world. At the very least they needed to send a transmission and  _try_  to warn them.

"I'll be there as soon as I can, I told you!" the woman bit out. "Even if the soul stone  _is_ gone—which I still believe it isn't—we can eliminate these pesky Guardians and bring our lost sister back to Thanos."

_Gamora._ Quill desperately hoped she hadn't been captured.

"I'll bring his body to you. Now leave me alone!" The woman started off through the forest, still leaning hard on her weapons, and Quill held his breath until she was well out of earshot. Then, finally, he let himself relax.

He raised a hand to his ear, keeping as still as he could just in case the woman circled back around, and turned his earpiece back on.

_"…response from Quill! I hate to say it, guys, but he might be—!"_

"I'm here!" he whispered as softly as he could, hardly daring to speak. "I'm okay, guys, I just had to turn the earpiece off for a minute!"

_"Quill!"_ Gamora burst out.  _"You've been offline for far too long; we're all moving to meet back at the Milano! Rocket has all the systems repaired."_

_"You bet I do,"_ Rocket said,  _"so get your ass back here! We're leaving you behind if you're not back in ten minutes!"_

_"No we're not,"_ Gamora snapped.  _"Quill, are you hurt? Where are you?"_

"I'm a little rattled, and there's a stab wound in my shoulder, but I'm okay. I have to stay put for a few minutes until I'm sure this goth chick is too far away to see me running back. How about you guys? Are you okay?"

_"I'm fine,"_  Gamora said.  _"A bit scraped up, but I lost the person chasing me."_

_"Drax and I are okay too!"_  Mantis chirped.  _"We threw the Black Order off our scent."_

Drax agreed,  _"We did. It was a glorious battle!"_

_"It was a lot of running!"_  Mantis corrected.

_"It was still quite glorious. You would have trembled to behold the—"_

_"Now is_ not _the time,"_ Gamora snapped.  _"Everyone loop back around to the ship so we can get out of here."_

Quill shook his head. "Might not be that easy, guys. I just heard one of the Black Order talking about how the Collector told her the soul stone was here. Apparently Thanos sent these guys to retrieve it and meet him on Xandar, where he's going to wipe out anyone in his way and take the power stone."

The lines went silent for a moment as everyone processed that.

Then, chaos.

_"What the hell do you mean he's going to take the power stone off of Xandar?"_

_"He can't! He'll destroy—!"_

_"If he gets that stone, he'll be unstoppable!"_

Quill flinched, the voices overlapping at a painful level. "Woah, guys! We can deal with this once we're back in one place; let's not destroy the coms yelling at each other!"

_"How can we not yell? If Thanos gets that stone, we're done for! The power stone has enough raw energy to wipe out anyone and anything in the galaxy!"_

"And we'll deal with that," Quill said, "but right now let's just get out of here! The Black Order is still hunting for us, after all."

No one seemed happy, but there wasn't anything they could do while they were arguing over the coms. So everyone grumbled their agreement and started off, ready to meet at Rocket's location.

As the final few voices droned on through the coms, Quill peered out through the gap in the leaves to make sure the woman wasn't coming back. Then, seeing and hearing no one, he slowly began to extricate himself from his hiding place.

It was slow, terrifying work. He couldn't afford to make noise, but he needed to get away quickly. By the time he got up and started slinking through the forest, his heart was beating out of his chest. But the further he moved, the more certain he became that the woman was still searching in the wrong direction. Eventually his creeping turned to walking turned to jogging, and he was reaching the edge of the dead forest and peering out to make sure no one was on patrol.

The donut ship was still floating in the sky, but it was facing the other way and far enough off to be nonthreatening. With luck he could slip from boulder to boulder, keeping himself concealed, and make it back to the Milano. He thought he could already see the tip of one of its wings.

_Okay, here we go._

He made his first move, running out and sliding behind the first boulder. When no shots were fired, he knew he was safe and dashed to the next. Then the next, shooting glances in all directions to make sure no one was close enough to see him. He was relatively camouflaged, a dark figure against dark stone, but he was still nervous about—oh, maybe  _being killed_. Luckily it seemed as if his life-threatening encounters were over for the time being, as he hopped from hiding place to hiding place and eventually drew close to the ship.

"Guys," he called as he jogged up the ramp, "I'm here!"

"Well it's about damn time!" Rocket yelled from the cockpit. "Now we're just waiting on Gamora."

_"I'm almost there,"_ came Gamora's voice from the coms. " _Hold fast."_

Quill wove his way into the cockpit and slid into his seat. Drax and Mantis were already there watching nervously, Groot was plastered to the windshield looking for Gamora, and Rocket was jamming on buttons furiously in an attempt to get the final systems online. A moment later he leaned back successfully and announced, "That was the last system! We're ready to get off this miserable rock."

"Gamora," Quill said, "what's your ETA?"

_"Thirty seconds. Start the engines, I—oh no—"_

Quill opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, but he didn't get any further than that before the explosions started.

"Gamora, you idiot!" Rocket yelled. "Did they see you?"

_"Obviously!"_

The donut ship was beginning to spin in their direction. As Quill squinted out the window, he saw a train of explosions following a shadow that had to be Gamora. She was sprinting, barely keeping ahead of the blasts—and she was leading them right toward the Milano.

Quill's heart skipped a beat. "Rocket, you'd better get this ship running!"

"Already on it!" Rocket flicked the last switch, and everything buzzed to life. "Quill, program us a path right to Xandar!"

He was already in the process of doing so, working with the navigation computer to select the right destination and find the safest path. He was certain that in a matter of seconds the donut ship would be firing on them with everything it had, convinced the soul stone was inside.

Footsteps thundered up the ramp, and then Rocket was jamming on the controls and forcing the Milano off the ledge it was perched on. Lasers peppered the mountain behind them, missing the hull of their ship by an inch, and then they were in the air and flying.

"Gamora!" Quill called. "Are you okay?"

There was a pause, then a whole lot of clanking. The next moment Gamora was stepping into the cockpit and saying, "I'm okay! Just a few scrapes; they missed the important parts." But she was holding her side, and she looked like she was in pain.

Rocket swore as a few shots clanked off the hull, and lights began to flash red. "They're firing at us!"

"We have to make it back to the warp point before we can jump to Xandar," Gamora said, even though everyone was already thinking it. "It won't be easy with the Black Order chasing us."

Rocket twisted the controls hard, taking the Milano to one side as the Black Order ship continued to fire on them. Unfortunately he was just a hair too slow, and another shot clipped their left wing.

"Damn it!" Rocket snapped, banking the ship in a wide turn and speeding for the planet's atmosphere. "Quill, on the guns!"

"We can't shoot  _backward,_ Rocket, are you insane?" But still he grabbed the controls on his side of the console and did his best to help, reinforcing every turn and boosting the engines whenever they needed to shoot straight up into the sky.

Rocket swore as another blast narrowly missed the hull of the ship. "This is going to be close! Quill, how far is the jump point?"

He let go of the controls long enough to tap at the navigation system, which seemed to be glitching out after the most recent hit. "I don't know, ten minutes? There's—oh, man."

"What? What is it?" Rocket demanded furiously, jolting the ship to one side so hard that the chairs creaked from the strain of staying upright.

Quill pointed at the screen. Then, realizing that Rocket didn't have the time to look over, he said, "We're coming out at a different trajectory than we came in, and you're taking us right toward the planet's eastern asteroid field!"

"Well the jump point is on the this side, so we'll just have to go through!"

"But we were supposed to go  _around—!"_

"That was when we had time to be safe! Now a Black Order ship is tearing after us and we have to get out of here  _now!_  We're going through the asteroid field!"

Quill wanted to argue, but that was the moment when some kind of alarm sounded in the hold and something sharp and horrible twisted in his stomach. "We need ten minutes," he repeated, because that was all he could think to say.

Rocket gave a sharp nod and kept on the controls, twisting around another barrage of lasers and finally breaking the atmosphere. Quill didn't risk looking behind them through the viewport, but he knew the ship was following because Mantis said, "They're coming!"

Rocket swore and gripped the controls harder, as if that might make them go faster. But of course it didn't, and they were left dodging and rolling as the donut ship pursued. Quill grit his teeth as one particularly harsh roll made something pop in the hold.

"Let's hope the ship isn't falling apart," Gamora hissed, clutching at her side as the ship lurched. "If our hull is punctured we're done for."

"Yeah, well don't tell the Black Order that!"

"Or the asteroid field," Quill said, heart sinking, as they tore for the mess of rocks and shrapnel just outside their viewport. Looking down at the navigation computer, he saw that they had about a seven-minute flight through the field before they hit the warp point and got away. The Black Order would have no idea where they were going, and would be unable to pursue.

The team went strangely silent as they hurled into the asteroid field, tension falling over them like a blanket.

"Come on," Drax said from the second row of seats. "We've flown more dangerous routes than this! Let us meet this challenge with vigor!"

But no one else seemed quite so eager. The asteroids were massive and close together, a kind of security system for Vormir itself, and Rocket narrowed his eyes and gripped the controls so tightly that if he'd been human, his knuckles would have been turning white.

"At least the other ship won't be able to follow?" Mantis tried. But even as she said it the Black Order vessel was crashing toward them with no signs of stopping.

"It's so big it's going to push right through the asteroids!" Quill realized. "Rocket—!"

"I'm  _trying_ , just give me a minute!"

The ship twirled through a narrow gap between asteroids and blasted on, rolling from side to side and boosting through so many closing cracks that Quill's heart almost stopped. They'd flown through asteroid fields before, but now the stakes seemed higher—after all, being caught would mean being either killed immediately or taken to Thanos. Neither option seemed particularly better than the other.

Behind them, the donut ship was beginning to crash through the asteroids. It was so massive that it knocked them out of the way like pennies, which was even more of a problem seeing as it knocked them  _toward_ the Milano as they tried to escape. Asteroids bumped into other asteroids, which sped up and closed gaps and proved to be very,  _very_ inconvenient. The entire ship jolted as a smaller asteroid bumped into its rear, pushing it forward

Quill bristled. "Come on, man, this is a fresh paint job!"

"Like hell it is! With your flying, it's already covered in scrapes!" Rocket hissed as a massive chunk of rock approached from behind and very nearly took out their right wing. The donut ship was close enough to fire now, and fire it did.

"Major systems are being damaged!" Gamora yelled over the noise of shrieking metal and the grinding of rock on rock. "Look at the readout!"

He did. Then it was his turn to swear, as he saw that one of the blasts had damaged a system crucial for maintaining structural integrity while they were traveling through wormholes. The monitor was flashing red.

"How bad is it?" Rocket asked, still focused on keeping them from being blown to pieces.

"Not terrible," Quill said, though his tone was a bit forced. Because yeah, that was bad.

Gamora narrowed her eyes. "It's bad. We won't be able to sustain a jump from here to Xandar."

"Then find us somewhere we  _can_ jump to, and fast! We're approaching the warp point and if we don't take it we're dead!"

Quill tried to program in a different destination, one that wouldn't tear them apart on the journey there, but the system was more damaged than he'd thought. "It's not letting me program in a new destination. It's fried!"

"Then how about an old one?" Mantis suggested. "Can you access where we jumped last?"

"Where we jumped last was  _here_ ," Quill said, but he was already tapping at the screen to see if he could find any other records. "There's only Vormir and—oh,  _great."_

"Vormir and what?" Gamora asked sharply.

Quill winced. "Knowhere."

A surge of tension gripped the cabin for a second time, as they realized they were going to have to go back to the man they'd just slighted. He wouldn't be happy to see them. He might even have something set up to try and kill them again.

"Well," Gamora said, "better Knowhere than death or capture. Select it and let's go."

So Quill did just that. He struggled to select the destination amidst a glitchy system, barely staying in his seat as Rocket kept rolling the ship from side to side. "Three minutes to the jump point; Knowhere is programed in!"

"It'll be close," Rocket said, narrowing his eyes at the viewport.

_As long as we get out of this alive,_ Quill thought as they barreled through the field. But he wasn't feeling as optimistic as he had been two minutes ago, as the donut ship edged in on them and kept firing.

"There goes the landing gear! That last shot fused the hatch shut!"

"We'll deal with it if we get out of this!"

The warp point was in sight. Quill did what he could to push the engines even further, but they were already at their breaking point as they fought to escape the Black Order ship creeping in from behind.

"Almost…almost…!"

A horrible cracking sound came from the hold, and a steady hissing sound began to fill the ship.

_"Shit—_ boost the engines, boost the engines!"

Quill slammed on the console, the ship lurched forward, and they were sucked into the wormhole.


	7. Return to Knowhere

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are heating up!

"Our landing gear is fused! How are we supposed to set down once we get to Knowhere?"

"Forget that, we're beginning to depressurize!"

"Forget  _that_ , our wing is hanging by a thread! If that wing goes, we'll be thrown out of the wormhole and vaporized!"

Quill grit his teeth, eyes scanning the readout from the systems check. Nothing looked good; it would be a miracle if they made it to Knowhere in one piece. And from there, what were they supposed to do? They'd need to get to Xandar to stop Thanos, but without a functioning ship…

"Rocket," Gamora snapped, "work on keeping the ship in one piece! I'm going down to see if I can locate the breach in the hull and patch it up."

Rocket gave a sharp nod, already working to keep the ship from fracturing into pieces and killing them all. "I'm taking the shortest route possible, but we've still got a while before we can drop out of warp! We have to get the inside of the ship stabilized!"

Quill wanted to help Gamora patch up the breach, but he was glued to the controls. The entire ship was shuddering in a bid to fall apart, and keeping it from doing so was a battle. If they could just get the interior stabilized, they might have a chance at coming out unscathed. But of course, that would still leave the landing and the repairs and then the trip to Xandar and the fight against Thanos and the infinity stone to find, and—

He cut himself off there. He just had to worry about this first step—getting them to Knowhere in one piece. He'd worry about landing once they were there.

Gamora vanished down into the hold, but Quill wasn't sure what she would be able to do. Patching up a hole in a spaceship wasn't exactly easy business.

"Quill, how are we doing?"

He snapped back to the console. More systems were flashing red now, as the stars streaked by at the speed of light, and there was a nervous lump in his stomach as he did his best to stabilize things. But of course, there was only so much he could do with the controls.

"How bad is it?" Drax yelled to Gamora, standing half in the doorway to hear her response.

"It's bad!" she yelled back. "There's a crack that's starting to depressurize everything, and it's not something I can fix while we're in the air! We have to land as soon as possible!"

Quill swore under his breath and kept at the system diagnostics, watching more and more red lights start to flash. "We won't make it, Rocket! We have to drop out of warp!"

"We're in between warp points!" he snapped. "Dropping out will kill us; we have to push through to Knowhere!"

He swore and gripped the arms of his chair as the ship rattled violently, and the sound of tearing metal sounded in the hold.

"Rocket, we have to land  _now!"_

Gamora's voice was so loud, even from another part of the ship, that it made half the team jump. But she was right—they weren't going to last much longer.

"We're almost there," Rocket said, eyes fixed on the viewport. "Just—a few more hours, maybe, we have to hold it together until then!"

" _Hours?_ " Mantis shrieked from the back seat. "We will not last five minutes in conditions like this!"

"We have to!" Rocket yanked on the controls, but the ship just shuddered like it was half a beat from tearing in half. "Come on, come on…!"

Quill hissed in alarm as the systems readout became more and more dire. "We have to drop out!" he called finally, when the red lights began to outnumber the green and yellow combined. "Rocket, we won't make it! Mantis is right!"

"Like hell she is! I'm a great freakin' piolet, I'll land this thing without a hitch!" But even as he said it the alarms were getting louder and the ship was falling apart faster and faster, and Quill's stomach dropped as the ship nearly lurched into the side of the wormhole and disintegrated entirely.

Rocket cursed. "Okay, okay, Gamora how are we looking down there?"

"Not good! I can't get this patched up in time, I—!"

There was a crash, and she went quiet.

"Gamora!" Quill made to get up and see what had happened, but he was stopped when the ship made a genuine effort to pitch over and crumble into ash. "We have to put down!"

"Where, in the void of space?" Rocket yelled. "Hang on—I can try to get us out, but it might tear the ship apart!"

"Can we do it  _without_ getting the ship torn apart?"

_"No!"_

Quill cried out as the ship pitched to one side, white-knuckling the controls. "There's an exit point up here, but it's small! We might not fit!"

"We'll have to try!"

The ship shot forward, wobbling and swaying the whole way, scraping the bottom of the warp tunnel and losing entire chunks of metal. Things weren't going to look good if they managed to land without getting killed.

Rocket leaned up in his seat, squinting out the viewport to judge the distance as well as possible. "Okay, I'm dropping us down! In three, two, one...!"

The ship wailed as it collided with the side of the wormhole, the electronics flickered, the cabin compacted, and everything went dark.

 

* * *

 

Quill was almost surprised to regain consciousness.

When it happened, he had a hard time putting it all together. One moment he was gone, and then he was just suddenly  _aware,_ like he'd dropped out of the peacefulness of the void and into a confusing mangle of metal and pain.

Because yeah, there was pain. There was a lot of pain, thank you very much, and he wanted nothing to do with any of it. But there he was, staring up at the twisted metal of what had to be the Milano's roof, and everything hurt like he'd been thrown through a blender.

The longer he stared up, the more he remembered. The trip to Vormir, the frantic flight on the planet's surface, the failed attempt to jump back to Xandar…he cringed just thinking about it.

…And speaking of Xandar, where exactly had they ended up? Was everyone even still alive? Gamora hadn't been strapped down when they'd taken that dive, and he thought he remembered Mantis slamming pretty hard into the back of Rocket's seat.  _He_  felt banged up and he'd been safely belted down.

Quill forced his limbs to respond. The instant he did he felt  _pain,_ gripping his body and letting him know that he'd bruised himself pretty badly. He wasn't sure yet if he was bleeding, or if he'd broken bones, but everything just felt warm and tender and awful. His head spun as he tried to lift it.

Finally he managed to undo the straps holding him to the remnants of his chair, and then he was blinking dizzily and sitting up. "Hey, guys?" he asked shakily. "You there?" Because the cabin was eerily dark, and he couldn't see a thing beyond his own hands.

A groan sounded from one corner. "Quill? That you?"

"Yeah…Rocket, are you hurt?"

"Oh, I'm  _great._ Are the others…?"

"I am Groot."

"Well if you don't know then don't say anything! Idiot. Wait, are you okay? Where the hell did you vanish to?"

"I am Groot!"

Quill left the rest of the conversation to the imagination as he turned, looking for the others. Mantis was still passed out, a nasty slice in her forehead from the tumble, but Drax was waking up. Gamora was nowhere to be found.

"Where are we?" Drax asked blearily. "Did we live?"

"We lived," Quill said, voice tight with pain. "Don't know where we are, though. Rocket, can you…?"

Rocket got to his feet shakily, fur ruffled, tail puffed up in a way Quill would have made fun of if not for the situation. He flicked his ears and struggled to straighten himself out, peering over at the navigation panel. But it was shut down, totally broken after the crash, so all he could see was a blank screen.

"Okay," Quill said as Rocket turned back, "how about the viewport? Why is it black, are we just drifting around in space?"

"No, I think we crashed viewport down," Rocket groaned. "Hang on, we have to find Gamora and get the hell out of here. Wherever we are, we could be in some serious trouble!"

Quill finally managed to get his feet beneath him. The cabin had crumpled a bit, but it looked like there was still a way back into the body of the ship. Hopefully Gamora hadn't been sucked out into space or otherwise killed.

"Gamora?" Quill called as he squeezed his way through the door, making his way for the ship's exit ramp. It was probably jammed, but they had to try. "Gamora, are you down here? Can you hear me?"

There was a long, tense pause. But then, "Quill?"

Her voice was strained and tense, but it was there and that was enough. When Quill finally got close to the exit ramp, he saw her slumped against the wall with a hand over a wound on her side. There was a nasty scrape on her cheek, and her arm was hanging a bit funny at her side, but she was alive.

"Gamora!" He made his way painfully to her side and knelt, reaching for the hand over her side. "Shit, is it bad? You're not dying, right?"

She huffed at him. "I'll be fine. How are the others? Where did we end up?"

"The others are alive," Quill said, making an attempt to lift her hand and receiving a sharp slap on the wrist for his efforts. "As for where we are…well, we're about to find out."

Gamora narrowed her eyes. "The ship isn't working." It wasn't a question. "Without it we have no way out of where we are, which could be  _anywhere_. And bursting through a wormhole like that rarely spits you out anywhere good."

"Well, let's just see where we've ended up."

Behind them, footsteps sounded. "Mantis is still out, but the rest of us are up," came Rocket's voice. "Ready to burst those doors open and see what we're dealing with here?"

"Ready," Quill said, pushing to his feet. "Gamora, think you can handle waiting here for a minute?"

"You need my help!"

"You're hurt," Quill protested.

"Yes, but so are you! We're all injured."

"But I don't have a wound of questionable size in my side right now! I mean come on, how deep is that thing? You won't even let me see it!"

Gamora scowled and pulled her hand away, letting him see the wound. It looked like it had been caused by a piece of shrapnel that was now sitting on the ground next to her, splattered with red. Not deep, but not shallow either. It would need stitches.

Rocket seemed to know it too. "Oh,  _great,"_ he said. "Gamora, get back to the cabin and tell Drax to see if he can find anything in what remains of the med bay. Quill, you're with me!"

Gamora looked like she wanted to protest, but Quill just raised a brow at her and she seemed to crumble. She had to be more injured than she was letting on. Speaking of which, he was hardly okay himself—the stab wound in his shoulder wasn't bleeding anymore, but it still stung and he knew it needed attention. But first, he had to help Rocket.

"Okay," Gamora rasped, pushing herself to her feet and leaning heavily on the wall. "Just tell us what's out there the instant you know."

Quill gave her a sharp nod and turned his attention on the mutilated doors to the outside world. At a first glance they seemed almost welded shut, but when he walked up to them and tried to pry them open, they gave without much of a fuss. The landing must have ripped them almost clean off, despite their appearance.

"Well let's hope the air is breathable!" Rocket snarked, trying to look through the open doors. But even with the doors gone, there was nothing but darkness. They were backed up right against a cliff or a wall or something, with only a small gap barely large enough for a person to fit through.

Quill gingerly separated the rest of the door from the frame. "The air is always breathable, with our luck." He made like Rocket and tried to look out, but he couldn't see a thing. "Our scanners aren't going to work like this, and we have to know where we are."

"Then let's hope there's nothing out there with a taste for morons!" Rocket dropped through the door without another word, gun strapped to his back but just as damaged as the rest of the ship, and Quill was following a moment later in alarm.

When they dropped down, it took a moment for the dust to settle. Quill waved a hand in front of his face in hopes of getting the stuff away, but all he ended up doing was stirring it up more as he squinted into the stuff. Rocket wasn't doing too much better, low to the ground as he was. He took a few steps forward and started coughing.

"We must have crashed not too long ago, for things to be stirred up like this," Rocket said. "Think we're on a civilized planet?"

"Your definition of civilized and my definition are two very different things," Quill said, still trying to look through the dust. The world around him was cold and hostile, and he felt a pang of nervousness that they'd ended up far, far away from any kind of city as Thanos bore down upon Xandar. With their ship totaled, they'd have no way to let them know what was coming. Thanos would get the power stone and it would be over.

"I see something!" Rocket called.

"What, from all the way down there?" Quill tried to joke, but it fell flat. "What is it?"

Rocket put a hand half over his eyes to protect them from the dust, and pointed over the horizon. Sure enough, when Quill raised his head he saw some kind of dark structure rising through the storm of dust and debris. Not too far off, but it was still a bit of a walk.

"Do you recognize this place?" Quill asked as they started to pick their way forward, hoping to find a clearing and get their bearings.

"What, seriously?" Rocket hopped over a rather large chunk of metal. "I haven't seen  _every_ place in the galaxy, you idiot! And besides, I can't just pick this planet out from the rest after taking to steps!"

Quill raised his hands. "Geez, I get it! Let's just figure out what that structure is, then we can report back and—"

He stopped.  _Oh, no way._

"What?" Rocket asked. "What is it?"

Quill raised a silent finger and pointed.

Rocket bristled. "Oh, son of a—!"

Quill stared in disbelief at the glowing sigil on the side of the structure, barely visible through the dust but visible just the same. A blocky symbol with interlocking lines. One he recognized.

They were back at the Collector's warehouse.

"How the hell did we get here?" Rocket screeched furiously. "We do everything in our power to put this guy behind us, and we just end up right back on his doorstep! Even if we programed this place into the nav computer before it exploded, we should never have had enough juice to make it back out here!"

"No," Quill agreed, perturbed. The ship had been far, far away from the Collector when it had gone down. It shouldn't have made it all the way to Knowhere in one piece. The fact that it had…

"Well I guess we know where we are," Rocket snorted. "Come on, let's let the others know we're screwed."

"Wait." Quill took another few steps forward, squinting up at the building. Something felt off to him. He could buy that  _somehow_ they'd ended up on Knowhere, because the universe was strange like that, but hadn't that building used to be a lot more…building-y?

Rocket turned back. "What is it?"

He just shook his head. "Does that building look half destroyed to you?"

Rocket frowned and looked up at it. "It just looks like a building to me! What are you expecting?"

He was expecting a structure that wasn't smoking and half destroyed.

"Something's wrong," Quill said in a low tone. "This place has been attacked."

"What, by who? You're out of your mind!"

"I'm not." Quill moved back, now, afraid that the attackers would still be in the area. This looked recent. "Just look at it, man, it's been blown up! This isn't just dust, it's ash!"

Rocket peered skeptically at the building. "Even if you're right, who would attack Tivian? The guy lives in a fortress full of the most powerful artifacts in the universe!"

"We attacked him and made it out, and so did those Asgardians. Why not someone else?"

"Well, still—who stands to gain from taking such a  _stupid_  risk? Besides that, who has the power to actually pull it off?"

It dawned on Quill a heartbeat before it dawned on Rocket.

Rocket's expression fell. "Thanos."

"Tivian knew where the soul stone used to be," Quill said, "and he had the reality stone in his possession before those Asgardians got to it. Maybe Thanos wanted to know more."

"If he's here we're  _really_  screwed," Rocket said.

"Well those guys on Vormir said that they were heading to Xandar to meet up with Thanos, so let's hope he's there and not here." Quill turned back. "Come on, we have to tell the others and figure out where to go from here. We have to warn Xandar, but without a working ship…"

Rocket's expression hardened. "We'll figure it out."

"We have to, or an entire planet's worth of casualties will be on us."

They ran for the ship.

Gamora was in the process of stitching herself up when they got there, sitting in one of the wrecked seats in the cabin and hissing through clenched teeth. A row back, Drax was saying something to Mantis as she clutched her head and swayed. Groot was sitting on her knee, eyes wide and concerned.

"Good news and bad news!" Rocket announced, heading straight for the controls and trying to get them back online. Of course, nothing budged. The ship was totaled. "The bad news is, we've crashed on Knowhere. The other bad news is, it looks like someone's gone in and wrecked Tivian's collection, and we think it might be Thanos or his goons."

"What's the good news?"

"What? Oh, that's right—there is no good news!"

"I am Groot!"

"Because I didn't want to, idiot! Now come on, we have to think of some way off this miserable rock before we're found and killed! Or worse—before Thanos gets his meaty paws on a world-shattering, shiny purple rock!"

"We have to get a message to Xandar," Gamora said, tying off the last stitch and ripping the thread. She pinned a pad of gauze in place with a roll of bandages, finishing the job, then pulled her shirt back down to cover her handiwork. "If Thanos gets the stone we're dead, and so is that whole planet."

"And probably the rest of the universe," Drax said. "We must stop him, immediately! Let us meet with him in battle!"

Gamora threw up her hands. "He'll  _kill_ us, Drax, especially now that we're injured and without a ship! The most important thing now is warning Xandar that Thanos is coming, so that they can defend themselves and transport the power stone elsewhere!"

"And how are we supposed to do that?" Rocket demanded, finally stepping back from the controls. "This piece of junk is fried!"

"We'll have to get to the Collector's warehouse and find some way to get out a signal," Gamora said.

Rocket scoffed, "What? That warehouse could be inhabited by the Black Order for all we know, and we have no ship to get away this time!"

"Well our other option is to let Thanos show up and decimate Xandar!" Gamora snapped. "Even if the Black Order is there, we have to try."

"She's right," Quill threw in. "We'll just have to be sneaky about it. Get as close as we can and see if there are any bad guys lurking around. If there are, we take them out. If there aren't, we can slip right on through and find a way to broadcast a signal."

"We shouldn't put all of us in danger," Gamora said. "I'll go, and—"

"Hang on," Quill protested, "you just got stabbed! I can go, I'm not that hurt. And Drax, you too!"

"Drax is too much of a meathead to be stealthy," Rocket snorted.

"Hey!"

"I'll go," Rocket said, talking right over him. "You and me, Quill, sneaking into that trash heap of questionable structural integrity and finding a way to get a signal to Xandar."

Oh man, he did  _not_ want to go in there. He wanted to click his fingers and magically repair the ship and take off and save Xandar without ever having to face Thanos. But obviously that wasn't an option, so he steeled himself and nodded with as much resolve as he could manage. "Won't be a problem. We'll stay low and make sure there aren't any assholes around waiting to blow our heads off."

"Okay," Gamora said, looking none too pleased about the situation. "Just…be careful, Quill. If the Black Order is here, we might not have another chance to escape."

"Yeah, well you should be careful too. You're sitting ducks in this wrecked ship."

"We'll keep each other safe," Gamora assured him, eye twitching. "I'm no weakling, even when injured!"

Quill raised his hands and said, "Hey now, we all know that! Come on, Gamora, how many times do you have to kick my ass before you realize I'm not calling you weak?"

She gave him a halfhearted glare, then gave in. "Right…forgive me. Just be sure that you're not spotted."

"We're not idiots," Rocket said indignantly. "Or at least,  _I'm_  not. Quill, let's go. We can't waste time moping around."

It was true, but he still winced at the pull of his injuries as he made his way back to the exit. He paused to adjust his jacket to cover it, so hopefully it wouldn't reopen.

"Well?" Rocket snapped. "Quill, are you on board?"

He jolted. "Yeah, come on, man! We'll be in and out, easy."

Rocket narrowed his eyes at him suspiciously. "Then let's get moving!"

So that was what they did.

 

* * *

 

The Collector's warehouse was devastated.

It was impossible to walk in a straight line without hopping over chunks of rubble or shattered display cases every few feet. One wall had been blown out, and those adjacent were half crumbled. The ceiling was mostly on the ground. And the displays themselves—demolished. Not a single thing was in its proper place.

But really, that was just keeping with the rest of the building. The fortress around the shoroom was just as torn apart, with massive holes in the walls and all the doors melted clean off. It looked like someone had gotten in a really big ship with really big guns and just had their way with the place. Luckily, though, it seemed as if that person had long since fled the scene.

"It's a ghost town," Quill whispered, though that wasn't quite accurate. It was more like a ghost fortress.

Rocket flicked an ear in acknowledgement, keeping low and quiet as they circled the entrance to the building. They were sweeping the area to see if they could spot any signs of life before they just burst in there like a bunch of idiots. So far, there was nothing.

"This is recent," Rocket said as they moved. "But it seems like whoever did this took off before we crashed."

Quill winced. "And we have a pretty good idea of who that was."

Rocket didn't answer, because he didn't need to. They both knew that Thanos was most likely responsible for this destruction. He'd sent his goons to beat all the information they could out of the Collector.

"Let's head in," Quill said. "There's no one here."

"Hopefully they're not waiting to ambush us," Rocket muttered, but didn't protest as they started to curve in toward the entrance.

Quill waved a hand in an attempt to dispel some of the smoke and ash as they approached. The edges of the building were still smoldering, and the air was thick and heavy with soot and heat. There was a breeze, but all it did was stir up the embers and toss around smoldering chunks of wood and melting plastic. Quill was suddenly very thankful for his boots, which kept out at least most of the ash.

"Hey, watch out!" Quill swatted a tiny spark out of Rocket's tail, extinguishing it before it could really become a problem. "Maybe you should fly, man, you could incinerate out here with all that hair!"

Rocket just shook his head and said, "We're almost inside, genius. I can handle it."

They reached the door a few moments later and ducked inside. All at once, the smoldering sky was no longer visible. They were standing inside the crumbling remains of the Collector's front entryway, and it was still hot and smoky but not actually on fire, so that was a plus.

"Control room?" Quill guessed. "We might be able to send a signal out to Xandar from there."

Rocket nodded. "I can handle it, so just hang around outside the room and make sure no one bursts in and kills me."

"Make it fast!" Quill ordered as they wove their way up the stairs, where Gamora had found the control room during their last visit. "We don't know if those asshats will be back."

Rocket vanished into the control room, leaving Quill to stand guard outside. He paced the length of the hallway restlessly as his teammate worked. For all he knew Thanos was already on Xandar with his hands on the power stone, and all they could do was sit there and wait to see if they could get a signal out.

When Quill reached the end of the hallway, his stomach sank as he realized that he could see straight down into the showroom from the wrecked floor. He'd gotten a good look at it from the side as they'd come up, but now he could see it from the top and it was even more overwhelming. Whoever had been here—be it Thanos himself or members of the Black Order—had spared nothing in their quest to squeeze every last drop out information out of Tivian. It was almost sad. His collection was horrible—he essentially kept sentient beings as pets for his own amusement, not to mention the amount of sacred relics he'd wrenched from varying civilizations just so he could lock them up and make them look pretty—but Quill still felt just a touch of sympathy to see Tivian's life's work destroyed.

And where exactly  _was_ Tivian, anyway?

Quill stepped away from the showroom, a pit in his stomach. He had a bad feeling that the guy had met his end, and he didn't want to be the one that found the body. "Rocket," he called down the hall "how are we looking?"

There was a pause. Then, "I'm working on it! This equipment is barely better than that junkpile of a ship, and getting it to work is—" Another pause, then a furious bought of swearing as something went wrong.

"Rocket?"

"I've got it, I've got it! Just give me a minute…"

Quill made his way back to the control room, where he stuck his head in and looked for Rocket. He was standing in the seat in front of the console, banging on it furiously as it sparked and flashed.

"Woah, woah!" Quill yelped. "You're going to break it, Rocket, what are you doing?"

"I said I've got it!" Rocket hit the console one last time, and the flashing lights stabilized and turned green. "Geez, these guys really did a number on this place!"

Quill closed and locked the door behind him. "Is it working?"

"Barely." Rocket brushed a bit of debris away from the part of the console that would actually let him compose the message. "I'm not sure how long this'll hold, so let's get that message out fast."

"I'll do it," Quill said, stepping up to the recorder and adjusting it so it could get his upper body in the shot. "They know me best, after all."

Rocket shoved the mic at him and leaned back. "Hurry up, then."

Quill took it without question, hit the broadcast button, and waited for Rocket to plug in the right coordinates. When he gave the thumbs up, he turned to the camera and started to talk.

"Hopefully this is reaching you, Irani, because you've got a big storm coming if it isn't."

Rocket made a face at him, one that told him to stop beating around the bush.

"Right—I'm supposed to be warning you! Look, do you remember that glowing purple rock we gave you for protection? The infinity stone? Well you'd better ship that thing off planet, because someone really big and really bad and really powerful is coming right for it. He has an army, Irani, he's going to roll right over you. He's demolished entire worlds in the past before and he's planning on doing it again to you to get to that stone. And if he gets it, this whole universe is going to suffer."

"Give them the name, you idiot!" Rocket hissed. "How much more disorganized could you possibly be?"

Quill shot him a sharp look. "Why don't you do it if you're so good at this?"

"You moron, I—!"

Quill jolted, realizing that he was arguing with Rocket when there was an entire planet at risk. "Shit, sorry! The guy's name is Thanos, okay, the Mad Titan. You might have heard of him, and if you have then you understand how much danger you're in right now. He's there for the power stone, so take it and get off world as fast as you can! If he realizes the stone has been moved, he might not attack you. But you should still get the Nova Corps off the ground just in case, got it? This guy is no joke; I'm not even sure if you can hold him off if you try, but that doesn't mean all of us are just going to roll over and let him walk all over us. Our ship is totaled, but we'll be there as soon as we can. Hold out until then!"

Rocket yelped as the console started to spark. "Quill, it's going out!"

"Uh, right—just get the ships in the air, okay, make sure he can't get down to the planet's surface! We're certain he's just going to use brute force to mow you guys down, and—!"

The console sputtered one last time, spit out a shower of sparks, and choked out a large volume of smoke. By the time everything cleared up, the green lights had gone out entirely. The system was fried.

"Well," Rocket said, swatting the smoke in the air, "hopefully we got your message of questionable clarity to the right place."

Quill's stomach sank a bit. If they hadn't, Xandar could be doomed.

"No use in staying around here," Rocket said. "Let's call the others and let them know the coast is clear. We'll have to meet and talk about what the hell we're supposed to do now that our transport is toasted!"

"There has to be something around here we can use," Quill said. "A ship, or ship  _parts,_ or just  _anything_."

Rocket grumbled, "Let's hope."

They went back to the ship. Then they made their way back to the fortress, and as it turned out, Tivian had just what they needed. With the amount of stuff he hoarded, no one was surprised.

"It'll take a while to get this thing running," Rocket said when they found what they were looking for—a spare ship. "But it's our only option. We'll have to come back for the Milano once we save the galaxy for a third time."

Quill didn't want to leave the Milano for obvious reasons. But if it was a choice between letting the ship go or letting the  _universe_  go, the right decision seemed obvious.

The ship they'd found was old and rickety and clearly not meant for actual use. It had been hidden away in one of the rooms in the lower level of the fortress, probably meant for junk and scrap metal, but now it would hopefully carry the Guardians straight to Xandar. As long as they could actually make the proper repairs, of course. If they couldn't…

But no—failure here wasn't an option. If they wanted to stop the galaxy from going under, they had to get to Xandar as soon as possible.


	8. Xandar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not super happy with this one but honestly I've been staring at word documents for five hours today, and so this is the best I can do right now. Still, I hope you enjoy!

The Guardians got to work on the new ship.

It was in bad shape, but together they'd actually managed to do a good job of piecing it back together. It was a bit of a hack job—it would probably last to Xandar, but not as anything more than a one-way trip—but it was the best they had.

"Come on, you idiots, we're almost done here!" Rocket yelled. "Quill, I want that heat gun! Gamora, where are those metal plates I asked you to find? Drax, Mantis, you guys are taking forever with the systems check! And Groot—!"

"I am Groot!"

"Yeah, exactly! Keep doing that!"

Quill shook his head, amused, and went back to looking for the heat gun. He knew it was around here somewhere; Rocket had chucked it carelessly over one shoulder a few hours back and it had gotten lost in the mess around them. They weren't as close to takeoff as he wished they were (indeed, the functionality of the ship was only speculation at this point), but they had every motivation to work faster and harder. Thanos could be on Xandar by the time they got in the air.

"Having issues?" Quill called to Gamora as he searched. She was wrenching at a large sheet of metal, trying to remove it from a scrapheap so Rocket could repurpose it as a part of the ship.

She shot him a glance and kept tugging. "This is infuriating," she hissed, finally taking a step back to reexamine the situation. "Thanos could be on Xandar by now and we're stuck building a shuttle that probably won't last the journey!"

"Hey, woah!" Quill stepped over and grabbed ono the metal sheet, giving it a good yank. When it wouldn't budge, Gamora hooked her hands under it and pulled up as hard as she could. The piece finally groaned, creaked, and popped loose. "There we go," Quill said, letting Gamora take it from there. "And come on, let's have none of that bullshit about Thanos already being on Xandar! We can't think like he's already won or we'll never get off this rock. Plus if Rocket hear you talking like we've already lost, he'll want to take off to the furthest corner of the galaxy and not come out until either Thanos dies or  _he_  does."

Gamora chucked the metal in Rocket's direction, where it clattered and drew to a halt a short ways away from the ship. Then she started for another, beginning to pry it up so Rocket could use it to patch up the left wing. "I know," she said. "I'm supposed to be optimistic and claim that no matter what, our impeccable teamwork will take Thanos down. But truthfully, looking at what's happening here…" She waved a hand at the ruined ship.

Quill gave a forlorn nod. "I get it. But what's our other option, just give up? You know we can't do that."

"Yes…I know." She looked away bitterly. "That's our job as Guardians, right? To throw ourselves at the danger before it can throw itself at innocent people."

"Now you're getting it." He offered her a smile, but she was so busy tugging at the next sheet of metal to notice. He could practically feel her tension.

_"Where_ is the goddamn heat gun?" Rocket yelled.

Quill winced and got back to searching.  _I think it was somewhere right around…ah, there it is!_ He stooped and grabbed at the handle of the gun, extracting it from a pile of scraps and stripped screws. "Got it!"

He tossed it, and Rocket plucked it out of the air. "Well it's about damn time! If I just fix this wing and the systems check comes back green, we should be on our way!"

"I'll get the fuel," Quill said, turning away. They'd taken what they could from the Milano (in fact, the warp engine wouldn't have gone online without a few spare parts wrenched right from the heart of the poor ship), but he was still worried they wouldn't make it. Of course, the only thing they could do was try—but it was still alarming, looking at the low levels of fuel left in the canisters.

Quill delicately slotted the canisters into place. "Drax, let me know how that's looking!"

"In a moment! We're still checking the navigation systems."

_Right._ Quill moved to help drag the last of the metal sheets over to Rocket, where he was using them to patch up the few remaining holes in the wings. Not a great job, but with luck it would last them to Xandar.

"All our major systems are looking okay!" Mantis called, sticking her head out the viewport. "Not great, but okay! Most of them are flashing with yellow lights instead of red, so that's good!"

Rocket bristled, but didn't look up. "Then let's see if we can get them mostly green before we take off!"

"This is going to be close," Quill said, though he wasn't sure which one of them he was talking to. He winced as the couplers around the fuel intake valves shifted a bit with the force of Rocket's work on the wings. That…wasn't optimal.

"We'll make it," Rocket snapped, still refusing to raise his head. He finished up with the wings and stepped back. "There, see? In perfect condition!"

They were absolutely not in perfect condition. They had been cobbled together from bits of scrap metal, seams everywhere, screws popping loose around every corner, and Quill got the impression that if he breathed on them wrong they would fall apart.

"Ah…" Rocket hesitated. "Well, they're almost perfect! They might not look pretty, but they'll hold."

"Let's hope so," Gamora said, giving them a distrustful glance. "Did the fuel canisters settle correctly?"

There was a pause. Then Drax was appearing, shaking oil from his fingertips and saying, "As Rocket says, they'll hold. Though I would not trust them for further than one trip."

"I wouldn't trust them at all," Gamora said. "But we have no choice. How close are we to taking off?"

Rocket flicked an ear irritably. "A few hours at least. We've got to double check everything to make sure it's  _actually_ secure, run one last systems check in case we've missed something that's going to blow us all to hell, make sure our warp engine isn't going to spontaneously combust in the middle of a wormhole…there are a lot of variables here!"

"Then let's make sure those variables are nailed down," Quill said. "What else can we do?"

Rocket quickly assigned them their tasks. Even a few hours felt like too long when Thanos could be on his way to Xandar or already there. All of them were jumpy.

"What are we going to do once we reach Xandar?" Quill asked as he got back to work. "Just…what, take the stone and run?"

" _No_ ," Gamora said, "we're going to help the Nova Corps get it off of Xandar safely. There's no way they can hold of Thanos's armies, but at the very least they can make sure it's safe somewhere he will never find it."

"So we take the stone and run," Rocket said.

"Rocket—!"

"Sorry, sorry, I get it! Excuse me for trying to lighten the mood!"

Everyone fell eerily silent after that. They all knew the risks of what they were doing. They all knew that going to Thanos could end in their deaths.

"We just have to hope that Thanos isn't already there," Gamora said in a low tone. "If he's already attacking Xandar, it may be too late to escape. But if we can get there before he launches his big attack, we stand a chance."

"Or better yet," Quill said, "they might have gotten our message and already moved the power stone off world."

"Somehow I doubt they'll be that fast to act. But perhaps, if we're lucky, they will already have transport waiting by the time we arrive."

_If we're lucky._

Quill turned. "So are we going to come up with a plan, or just rush in there? I know plans aren't normally our strong suit, but it seems like we should have  _some_ kind of idea if we're just going to throw ourselves at one of the most powerful dudes in the known universe."

"It will be hard to come up with a plan before we know if Xandar received our message," Gamora said.

"Not that hard," Rocket snorted. "If we show up and they didn't get our message, we  _give_  them the message and help them run off with the power stone. If we show up and they did get our message, we find out if they sent the stone away and where they sent it, then we make sure it's actually safe."

"And if Thanos is there, already on the offensive?"

"Then we—uh—fight the guy until he leaves!"

"He  _won't_ leave, not if he thinks the stone is on Xandar. He'll tear it apart."

"Then we prove to him it's not there!"

Gamora hesitated. "That…might work to a degree. If we show him it's elsewhere, he might leave most of Xandar alone to pursue it. He doesn't like killing for no purpose, after all, and he might see the slaughter of millions of Xandarians as purposeless. But…it's a risk. It's equally likely that he'll just wipe the whole planet out as punishment for denying him."

"And we can't go toe to toe with him," Quill threw in. "He'll wipe us right the hell out."

Gamora nodded and said, "So running is the only option. We'll get there and make sure the stone is away from the planet. Then we'll leave and run as fast and as far as we possibly can. With any luck Thanos will follow in pursuit of the stone, and the planet will be safe."

Rocket snorted, "That's putting a lot of faith in Thanos, that he won't just blow the planet to shreds out of spite."

"Then we need to find a way to make sure the Xandarians are safe," Quill said. "How about an evacuation?"

"What, you think the Xandarians will be down to abandon their homes just like that? And if they have to leave the planet, how are we getting them off? There aren't enough ships in that entire  _cluster_  to get everyone off world in the time frame we're dealing with!"

"We'll…" Quill trailed off, expression twisting. "We'll find a way. We have to."

"We can't just leave the entire planet to die," Gamora agreed. "Let's just focus on getting there first, then we can talk to Nova Prime and figure out what we can do to help them."

"Assuming Thanos isn't already decimating the planet," Drax muttered from the cabin. Mantis swatted at him, alarmed, but he didn't move. "What? It's a possibility, we've said it before!"

Quill repressed a shudder before it could really get going. "Look, let's not think about that now. Let's get to Xandar first, then see what we're dealing with."

"What happened to wanting a full-fledged plan before we even got within sight of the planet's surface? _"_  Gamora asked, raising a brow.

"Well you all brought up some very valid points that quite frankly are making my stomach turn, so I vote we take off and try really hard not to think about it until we're there."

"Seconded," Rocket said. "Come on, let's do this!"

They got back to work.

 

* * *

 

"Engines are starting in three…two…one…now!"

The entire ship trembled, roared with the force of the newly restored engines, shuddered as the landing gear attempted to retract, and finally began to lift off the ground. It was shaky—there were still a whole lot of yellow lights and not a lot of green—but it held together as it rose further and further into the sky.

"Looking—well not good, but okay!" Rocket kept his gaze fixed firmly on the console, on all the blinking lights and flicked levers. He was back in the copilot's chair after a few minutes of arguing, leaving Quill to make sure they didn't go careening into the side of a mountain or something.

Quill glanced over at the monitors. "There's a jump point just outside Knowhere; we'll take it straight to Xandar and hope we aren't blown apart in the wormhole."

No one answered. They were too busy looking out the viewport and watching for chunks of the ship breaking apart and flying by. There hadn't been any yet, but it was more than a possibility. It was a likelihood.

"Systems are holding," Rocket said. "Groot, are we good in the cabin?"

"I am Groot!"

"Then keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't get any bigger!"

Quill's grip tightened on the controls until his knuckles turned white. He was well aware that this was insane. One wrong move would splinter them into pieces and suck them out into the void, and then nothing would matter because they'd be dead. The only thing stopping that from happening was Quill, keeping the console under close watch. There weren't any red lights yet, which was good—but the pressure of space was already putting a strain on the exterior of the ship.

"Jump point approaching," Gamora said from the back row. "We'll hit it in twenty."

Quill squinted at the point. "I give it ten."

"Quill, now is not the time to—!"

He jumped, yanking the controls to one side. "Make that five! Rocket, the warp engines!"

Rocket slammed his fists down on the right buttons, yanked the right lever, and then they were being sucked into the jump point.

The ship acted like it was going to fall apart. It shuddered and shook and whined and Quill was pretty sure the right wing was beginning to pull away from the ship. He adjusted the controls to put less strain on it, evened things out, and prayed that they weren't about to be killed.

"Still holding," Rocket said, though he looked tense. "Systems aren't in the red just yet."

One of the lights flashed.

"Okay— _one_  system is in the red. An unimportant system."

"Which one?"

"Just—it's not important, it's just oxygen!"

_"What?"_

Gamora shot to her feet. "I can go fix—!"

" _No_ , are you insane?" Quill glanced over at the console. "The last time you went to fix something in the middle of warp you ended up slung across the cabin and stabbed, so you just stay right the hell there!"

"But the oxygen—"

"—Will hold until we reach Xandar!"

Or at least, he hoped it would. The jump wouldn't last long if he took slightly more dangerous paths, and if they went quick enough the oxygen wouldn't fail until right when they landed. It would be fine. It  _should_  be fine.

The ship kept moving. It didn't fall apart, it didn't break in two and kill them all. But it did make sounds like it intended to just that, did lurch and roll and almost throw off one of its damaged wings.

"We'll make it," Quill said, but it was more of a wish than a certainty. The others seemed equally unconvinced.

But the ship still didn't go down. And it still didn't go down. And it  _still didn't go down._

They took one turn, then another, and another still. The ship didn't fall apart. They got closer and closer to Xandar, and it didn't fall apart.

"We're entering Xandarian territory," Gamora said at last, as if they weren't all watching the navigation computer in hopes that they would actually make it to Xandar. "We've got…what, another twenty minutes?"

"Ten," Quill said, and Gamora reached forward to swat him. "Okay, okay! It really is twenty this time."

Rocket flicked at the switches controlling the warp engine. "We're falling out of warp, there's a jump point up ahead! In five, four, three…"

The entire ship creaked and whined as they dropped out of warp. For a moment Quill thought that the ship really would fall apart this time, as half the wing tried and failed to tear off. But no one was really paying attention to that, because as they dropped out warp Xandar became visible and they saw—

"Nothing," Gamora whispered. "Why is there nothing? Where is Thanos's warship?"

"Hidden?" Drax suggested, leaning forward as if the extra half foot would let him see the nonexistent ship.

Gamora shook her head. "No, stealth isn't his style. But Quill, you said that he was going to meet the Black Order  _on_ Xandar…didn't you?"

"You think he's already on the planet's surface?"

"I'm not sure." Gamora looked troubled. "Regardless of where he is, we'll need to get the stone off the planet's surface as soon as possible."

"Let's hope we stick the landing and live to do that!" Mantis said from the back, gripping the bottom of her seat as hard as she could. "We're entering the atmosphere!"

They blasted through the atmosphere and cut through the clouds a minute later.

"We're coming in hot!" Quill yelled over the noise. "Rocket, start the landing procedure!"

"Oh, you mean the one flashing with red lights? Sure, let me get on that!"

Quill didn't have the time to snap back at him, as he held tight and tried to bring the ship in for a landing. They hadn't exactly told the Nova Corps that they were going in, but Quill was pretty sure they knew them well enough at this point to expect the impending shipwreck once they got that transmission. And if they hadn't gotten the transmission…

Rocket straightened. "Xandarian ships inbound! Two of them, coming right for us!"

"Well, I guess we'll know soon enough whether or not they're expecting us!" Quill tried to correct his path to avoid one of the ships, and only ended up clipping it a little. "Sorry, sorry!"

The coms fizzed, but nothing came through. The ship was too damaged to receive transmissions.

"Great, they'll think we're ignoring them!" Rocket bared his teeth at the viewport and yelled, "We're not  _trying_  to crash into your planet, you idiots!" But of course the two ships couldn't hear him, so they kept flying dangerously close to the makeshift craft.

The ship jolted as the two Xandarian crafts brushed its flanks. "They're  _touching_  us, man!" Quill said. He tried to get out of their way, but once again they moved in too close. "What are they doing?"

Gamora's eyes widened. "They're trying to support us. Look, they're using their shields to cushion and slow the ship!"

"I guess they were expecting us," Quill said. "Rocket, put everything you have into reverse thrusters!"

"Don't tell me how to do my job!" But he was already punching the reverse thrusters with all the power he could gather, slowing the ship dramatically as it careened toward the planet's surface. On either side, the Xandarian crafts were pushing them to the right.

"Landing pad!" Gamora called, jabbing a finger toward the platform that was rapidly increasing in size.

"We're on it!" Quill gave the controls one last jolt to angle the ship correctly, and then there was nothing else he could do. With Rocket on the reverse thrusters, all he could do was sit back and let the Xandarian crafts slow their fall as efficiently as they could.

The ship hit the landing platform, skidded, bounced, and came to a halt.

_"Ow,"_ Quill complained, rubbing at a scraped elbow and a forming bruise on his knee. That landing had been anything but smooth. But none of the others were yelling about grievous injuries, so that was a plus.

"That  _sucked,"_ Rocket groaned. He yanked at the safety belts holding him in his seat, popping himself loose and rising on shaking legs. There was a tuft of hair left behind in the buckle.

"Everyone good?" Quill called, looking back at the others. They looked a little beat up, but there didn't seem to be any grievous injuries. At least, none worse than the bound stab wound in Gamora's stomach. Or maybe the stab wound in his own shoulder, which was still throbbing and oozing blood. They'd had time for a quick patch job, but it wasn't anywhere near healed and it hurt like a bitch.

"I think my head hit the seat again," Mantis whimpered, rubbing at the healing gash. It hadn't been reopened, but it looked flushed and irritated.

"This place has cutting edge medical technology," Gamora said, though she sounded a bit shaky. Her hand was over the wound in her stomach. "Once we know the stone is headed off world, we'll heal up before evacuating."

Quill undid his safety restraints and got to his feet. The ship had landed at an angle, so he had to lean hard to one side to stay upright. There was a racket outside, the sound of the Xandarian pilots prying open the ramp. A moment later a familiar voice was calling into the cabin.

"Hey, guys? That's you and not some evil gang of douchebags, right?"

A spark of hope shot through him. "Rhomann! You made it!"

The man stuck his head into the cockpit, then winced. "Wow…you guys look like you were put through a blender."

"Yeah, tell me about it," Rocket grumbled. Then he turned and asked, "So are we under arrest for crashing on your planet?"

"What? No, come on! We know you guys; we're not going to arrest you. Plus we got your message so…"

"You did?" Gamora asked sharply. "Where is the power stone?"

"Well…" Rhomann paused. "It's still in the vault, but we have a ship on standby waiting to take it off world. We weren't really sure where to take it or what was going on exactly, so Commander Rael thought it was best to leave it be until you got here."

"So it's still here," Gamora said, bristling. "We have to get it off world immediately! Thanos could be here at any moment, if his Black Order operatives aren't already on the planet's surface."

Rhomann winced. "Yeah, about that…we're not really sure what any of that means? I mean if you could explain exactly what's going on then—"

"You don't even  _know?_ " Gamora shot to her feet, ripping the safety belts off in the process. "We have to speak to Irani  _now._ This whole planet is at risk!"

"Woah, woah!" Rhomann raised his hands nervously. "I can arrange a meeting with Nova Prime, but we can't go running around—!"

But again, Gamora cut him off. "Your entire planet could be in danger of vaporization, and you want to tell me to take a breath and calm down? We have to be fast! If we're not, the planet will die!"

"Hey, do you maybe want to explain…like, Thanos and stuff?"

Gamora pushed past him, making for the exit. "We can explain on the way to Nova Prime. Let's move!"

She was even more agitated than usual. But considering the situation, Quill thought he understood.

There was another pilot and a whole entourage of guards waiting when they emerged. All of them looked a bit on edge, and Quill wondered if they'd heard the message about Thanos. Or, if any of them even knew who he was.

Rhomann stepped out behind them, the last one off, and motioned to the guards. "Call Commander Rael and let them know we're bringing in the Guardians."

"It doesn't look like Thanos is here," Quill said, looking around as they started their march to the capital building. "No explosions, I mean. No…destruction beyond imagination."

"He could still be here," Gamora said, glancing around. "The Black Order is good at hiding in plain sight. How long was I here before anyone figured out who I was, back when I attempted to steal the power stone?"

"Okay, good point." Quill shot an anxious look at the people around them. Now that Gamora pointed it out, he was pretty sure that literally any of them could have been members of the Black Order.

"Not like we'll be here long," Rocket snorted. He pushed Groot a bit further up on his shoulder. "We'll just need to grab the stone and make sure it gets off world."

"It will be far longer if Thanos arrives," Drax said from behind them. "It will truly be a mighty battle if he chooses to attack!"

"Or he'll kill us all. It's fifty-fitty, really."

Gamora shot him a glare. "Rhomann, how much do you know about the message we sent you?"

He shifted nervously. "Well it kind of played on every screen on the planet, so I know everything you guys said. That Thanos was coming for the power stone, and that he intended to use it to kill us. The planet was kind of in a panic until we regained control and told them that everything was okay."

"We accidentally played that everywhere?" Quill asked, horrified.

"Well yeah, but we have it under control! Gotta admit I haven't heard much about Thanos other than the typical stuff of legend, though."

Gamora rolled her eyes. "You said something about having a ship ready. Where is it?"

"In the docking bay with all the rest of the ships. Nova Prime hasn't given us permission to take the power stone aboard yet, not until you guys give a full report."

"We may not have time for a full report," Quill said before Gamora could act on the murderous rage on her face. "Thanos could be here at any moment, and he'll kill us all once he gets his hands on that stone."

"Yeah, well…" Rhomann shook his head. "I can't do anything until you speak with Commander Rael."

"Then let's speak with her now."

So they went to the capital building, and Irani was waiting.


	9. Any Other Way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, this chapter just flowed so smoothly! Somewhere along the line I got at least somewhat decent at writing these strategic meetings right before the big battle. Woo!

"Let me get this straight—after leaving Xandar, you somehow managed to get to Knowhere, jump to Vormir, crash your ship, clash with the Black Order, escape, crash your ship  _again,_ build a new ship, and unveil a plot to steal the power stone and destroy a multitude of planets across the universe, all within the few days you were gone?"

Quill shrugged sheepishly. "Yeah, just about."

Irani put her head in her hands. "Goodness…and now you believe that Thanos is on his way here with the intent of taking the stone out of our vault?"

"Right again."

She looked even more distraught. "A few hours ago I was convinced our largest threat was the group of remaining Kree radicals. Now you're telling me that we are at a greater risk than ever, and the only thing we can do to stop it is run."

Rocket flicked an ear. "And she's right for a third time! Give the lady a prize, she's just won the lottery of totally obvious statements!"

Irani shot him an irritated glance. Then, to the rest of them, "I would question the legitimacy of your claim had I not already witnessed the power of the stone myself, and experienced your truthfulness in the face of calamity on such a grand scale."

"Um…" Quill blinked. "Thank you…?"

She nodded. "You're welcome. Now, though, you think our best course of action is to evacuate as much of the planet as possible?"

"The power stone has to be the first priority," Gamora said. "We need to get rid of it, send it somewhere safe. I suggest Vormir."

"What?" Rocket snapped. "Thanos already thinks the soul stone is there, that's insane!"

"He  _thought_  it was there," Gamora corrected. "Now he thinks that we have the stone, so he'll never suspect that we would use Vormir as a hiding place again. It's too obvious. Too  _stupid_."

"We'll still have to be careful we're not spotted on the way." Quill looked to Irani. "That ship you said you had ready—it's just like all the other Xandarian crafts, right? The ones that put up all those glowy yellow shields?"

She frowned. "Yes, they are."

"Great! Then we'll send all of them out at once so if Thanos is watching, he won't know which one has the stone."

Gamora's expression remained stony. "Classic, Quill."

"Right?"

Irani raised a hand. "That's all well and good about the stone, but what are we supposed to do about the rest of the planet? About the people? If Thanos is truly on his way, and if he's as powerful as you claim…"

"As we told you, it might be enough to give Thanos proof that the stone is no longer on Xandar. He's not one to kill indiscriminately, so if he knows we don't have it he may leave in pursuit. But again, he may choose to wreak havoc on the planet as an example of what happens to those who stand against him."

"And if he does choose to wreak havoc? You claimed that our best option is to evacuate, but I don't see how we can do that within the time frame you've given us."

Quill said, "There's—what, three million people on this planet? You don't have enough ships to take all of them off world?"

"Surely even you're intelligent enough to understand that we don't have a fleet that large."

He was. He'd just dared to hope.

Irani pinched at the bridge of her nose. "Okay. We'll just have to do what we can. Rhomann, I need you to organize the transport ships and start shuttling the first set of civilians off of Xandar. Put them on one of our sister planets, and make sure they're equipped to handle the influx of people."

Rhomann's eyes widened. "Ma'am, that's three million people you're talking about! We can get maybe five hundred thousand off world at a time, and even that amount will be a strain for any sister planet to take in! And how will we convince everyone to leave their homes?"

"I'm sure you'll figure it out."

"It's ridiculous to think we can get the entire population of this planet  _off_ of the planet!"

"Denarian, I am giving you an explicit order as your commander. Are you denying me?"

He paled. "No ma'am. We'll have as many people off world as we can as soon as possible."

"Good." She waved a hand, and Rhomann vanished through the doors. Then she turned back to the Guardians and said, "I plan to follow your lead, Guardians, as much as it may pain me to do so. You've more than proven your worth in the past, and now I will trust your judgment. Don't make me regret it."

"How kind," Rocket snorted. "Right, then—let's get the stone on one of those ships and take off! We have to get it to Vormir yesterday!"

"I suppose there's no other course of action." Irani looked to the guards standing on either side of her. "I need you two to go down to the scanners and make sure there's no sign of an incoming fleet. If Thanos is on his way, we need to know."

They nodded in tandem. "Of course, commander. We'll contact all the planets aligned with Xandar and make sure none of them are picking up on anything out of place."

"Very good. Off with you now!"

They followed Rhomann out of the room, and then the Guardians were alone with Irani.

She leaned forward, and something in her expression shifted. "Please, be honest with me. How likely is it that Thanos will decimate Xandar?"

The Guardians exchanged glances. Then Gamora was looking up at Irani and saying, "More likely than you should be comfortable with."

Her expression didn't change. "I see. Is there any point in sending the fleet in an attempt to hold him off once he arrives?"

"No." Gamora dipped her head. "I'm afraid that if he's decided to kill you, he's going to do just that. Your fleet won't stop him. The most we can do is contact him once he's in range and give him proof that the stone was taken off world. If he decides to leave, Xandar will be saved. If he doesn't…"

"I…" Irani paused, trying to compose herself. "I understand. In that case, we will do everything in our power to save our people in the time we have remaining until his arrival. In the meantime, let the six of us travel down to the vault and retrieve the power stone. I plan to accompany you aboard the ship, along with Rhomann and a few of my guards. We will make sure that the stone is in a safe place."

"Perfect." Gamora was already moving, stepping toward the exit. "Time is of the essence. Let's go."

They went.

 

* * *

 

The power stone was in the deepest level of the vault.

It took more time to get there than any of them would have liked, spiraling lower and lower until they hit the bottom level and Irani finally made way to the right chamber.

"This is it?" Gamora asked, narrowing her eyes at the vault. "This tiny room to contain something capable of wrecking the entire planet?"

"It's been more than sufficient so far." Irani approached, expression hardened into one of determination in response to the grim circumstances. Evacuations had already begun on the surface, though they had no idea if they were going smoothly or not, but she seemed entirely focused on the task at hand. She approached the wall leading into the vault, reached out a hand, and did something Quill couldn't quite make out.

"There," she said quietly, stepping back as the wall began to make sounds like something was moving on the inside. There was a series of clicks, an unlocking sound, and then the wall was swinging outward. And in its place—the orb.

It was still in its containment orb. Still perfectly safe to handle, as long as the casing didn't crack.

Irani gingerly lifted it from its cushion and turned as if she were holding a warhead. In reality, what she was holding was far, far worse than that. "Here," she said, holding it out. "I trust you with it far more than I trust myself."

Gamora was the one that reached out and took it. She stashed it away somewhere on her person, in some pocket attached to her belt. "I'll guard it with my life," she said, and Quill didn't like how serious she sounded. "Now all we have to do is get it to Vormir. In a good ship with actual warp capabilities, we can have it there in a day."

Irani nodded. "I'll take you to the ship now. I'm sure the others are already prepared for takeoff, so that we can confuse anyone who may be watching."

Quill glanced behind them nervously. He couldn't help but feel like he was being  _watched_ , somehow. It was an awful feeling. What if Thanos was already—?

Irani's communicator fizzed at her belt, making all of them jump.

_"Nova Prime! Come in, Nova Prime! This is Denarian Dey!"_

"Rhomann?" Irani raised the communicator, suddenly very pale. "What's happening?"

_"We have a lock on a very large mass of ships heading our way. We think it's Thanos, ma'am, and the fleet he's brought with him!"_

Though it didn't seem possible, she went even paler. "How long do we have?"

_"Until the main ship arrives? Maybe an hour. But there are a ton of smaller ships already converging on the planet from all sides!"_

"Which means—"

_"We're boxed in, ma'am, yes. Leaving will be even more difficult than we thought."_

Irani glanced up at the Guardans. "Let's go," she said. "We have to get up there now and see what's going on for ourselves."

They started for the surface.

_"Ma'am, should I deploy the Nova Corps?"_

She paused. "How many people do we still have on the surface?"

_"Almost all of them, ma'am! We only got half a batch out before the ships began to close in. Our transport vessels are locked out on the opposite side of the planet's atmosphere! If they try to move in, they'll be destroyed."_

Quill's stomach flipped.  _Not good. That means there are still almost three million people trapped on the planet's surface, and the infinity stone is still here so there's no incentive for Thanos to stop his advance. And the longer we wait, the more fenced in we become. Those ships are just going to circle the entire planet to make sure no one leaves._

Gamora seemed to think the same thing. She shot Quill a glance, then another to Irani. "You have to send the fleet," she said.

"But they'll be—!"

"Destroyed, I know. But if you draw Thanos's attention on the front lines, it's possible the transport ships can get through a weak point in the blockade and get down here to save more of your civilians. Start evacuating the city and arrange a drop point for those ships if they manage to get through."

Irani smiled, but it was forced. "And here I am thinking that  _I'm_  the commander." She shook her head. "I'll give the orders as soon as we emerge from the vault. I may lose many good men today, but they will gladly give their lives to save as many of our people as possible."

Drax gave a grim nod. "They will die in the most honorable of ways. Had we not such an important mission, I would gladly join them!"

Quill patted him on the shoulder. "Not now, buddy." Then, to Irani, "Let's get up there."

"This is bad," Gamora said as they walked. Her voice was quiet, but Quill still heard it. "If Thanos already has his ships closing in, to the point that we can't get the transport vessels back on the planet's surface…it may be too late for us to change the course of events here."

Quill's head jerked up. "Hey, none of that! We'll fix this. There's still time to get the stone off Xandar and save the planet."

"In theory." She glanced back, where Irani was walking stiffly with her fists clenched at her sides. She looked like she was fighting a losing battle to stay calm.

"We've saved the universe twice before," Quill said, trying to keep confident. "We'll do it a third time now. The Nova Corps will draw Thanos's ships out, we'll get the transport vessels in the back door, and then we can sneak the stone right off Xandar."

"And Thanos will slaughter the Nova Corps and move on to kill those remaining on the planet's surface," Gamora said quietly. "No matter how this goes, we stand to lose millions."

"And we'll deal with that if it happens. For now, let's focus on actually getting the Nova Corps in the air."

Gamora looked away and didn't respond.

When they got back up to the communications room, everything was chaos.

"Ma'am!" Rhomann gasped, lurching to his feet. The screens were flashing with lights and alarms and warnings, and the people manning those screens were scrambling around frantically. "We've got ships closing in and creating a blockade—what are your orders?"

Irani steeled herself. "We're going to draw them out. Listen closely and I'll tell you exactly what to do."

She went on, restating Gamora's plan. Almost immediately after she was done the Nova Corps was in action, scrambling all across the city to get to their ships and take up defensive positions. They wouldn't let that fleet reach the ground.

"We're going to do everything we can to make sure this planet doesn't fall," Irani said to Rhomann, who was watching her with terror in his eyes. "We  _will_  stop him from reaching the ground."

Quill admired her. She knew as well as the Guardians that Thanos probably  _would_  reach the ground, and that he would probably decimate at least half the planet in his quest to collect the infinity stones. But still she stood there, shoulders squared, strong and resolute under the eyes of her men, and acted as if she had complete control of the situation. She seemed as if all she was dealing with was another Kree radical, neatly dispatching him and throwing him into the lower levels of the penitentiary. She seemed powerful.

She nodded to Rhomann. "I want you on the ground during this. Monitor the defense closely and tell me if anything strange pops up on the radar. We need to know as soon as possible if something goes wrong."

Rhomann gave a shaky nod, but already he seemed calmer in the face of her resolve. "Yes ma'am."

Irani turned to the Guardians. "All we can do is wait. If Thanos is drawn to the point of defense, we'll move the transport ships through and get you, the stone, and the citizens off the planet's surface. If not…well, we'll see what happens. I'll have that ship waiting for you either way. If worse comes to worst, perhaps you can make a bid for escape through the blockade."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that," Rocket said shortly, pushing Groot further up on his shoulder.

"What are we supposed to do, just sit around?" Mantis rocked back and forth on her heels nervously. "Knowing that Thanos is just hovering up there?"

"There's nothing else that can be done." Irani looked away. "All we can do now is sit and wait for Thanos to either make contact, move in, or pull his ships toward the point of defense."

Gamora made this tiny movement, like a repressed shiver. "Great. That sounds… _great_."

Irani pursed her lips and said nothing.

On the monitors, Quill watched as the Nova Corps began to ascend. There was this dark, fearful lump in the pit of his stomach, and he didn't like it. He had a bad feeling about this whole situation.

But nothing happened.

The Nova Corps hovered there, Thanos's ships held their blockade, and the coms stayed dead. It was almost like they were  _waiting_ for something.

Until suddenly, they weren't.

_"Nova Corps, this is the Black Order. As you have no doubt noticed based on your defensive maneuvers, we have established a blockade around your planet. Unless you meet our demands, we will use that blockade to keep you on the surface as we fire without mercy, decimating your entire planet."_

"Well that's fun," Quill muttered, and Gamora elbowed him sharply to keep him quiet.

_"I'm sure you already know what we want,"_ the voice continued, rough and vaguely feminine.  _"You have the power stone. We require it."_

The tension in the air spiked tenfold. Nervous glances shot between the Guardians.

_"You're going to have your leader take the power stone and bring it to the courtyard outside the capital building. Once you've done that, we will dispatch a few of our numbers to retrieve the stone. If an attempt is made on their lives, the planet will be destroyed. You have thirty minutes to acquiesce."_

The coms fizzled out, and the room was thrown into thick silence.

Quill cleared his throat. "This," he said, "is not good."

"That's an understatement," Rocket grumbled. "What the hell are we supposed to do now? We have thirty minutes before those Black Order assholes are on the ground, and they'll blow the planet to shreds if the power stone isn't there to meet them!"

Quill looked sideways at Gamora. She was staring at the ground, jaw clenched, looking she was about half a second from exploding. "If we hand that stone over," she said, tone low, "Thanos will kill us all."

Irani's expression hardened. "Rhomann, is the blockade still strong around the entire planet?"

"Yes ma'am" he said. "They're not being drawn in this direction by the defense as we hoped."

Drax said, "There must be a weak point somewhere! No blockade is airtight."

"Well I can't figure out where the gap is!" Rhomann snapped. "The scanners are showing no weak points."

"Then we  _make_  a weak point," Quill said. But although it sounded good, he had absolutely no idea how to do just that.

Gamora shook her head. "The instant one of those ships is attacked, the others will move to defend."

Something clicked. "And once they do, there'll be a gap for us to sneak through!"

"Quill…" Gamora didn't look convinced. "If we take the stone off world now, Thanos will most likely destroy Xandar. He knows it's here, so to move it to Vormir now would be an open act of defiance. He won't stand for that."

"And we can't get the people out in time with the blockade in place," Irani said. "Oh, no…"

"Well," Mantis said, "can we contact them now and tell them that the stone isn't here?"

Rocket raised his head. "Yeah, tell them that a bunch of idiots called the Guardians of the Galaxy showed up and took it off world because they suspected the Black Order was after it!"

"Then he'll ask for the location, and when you give him a false one he'll come right back and destroy the planet." Gamora crossed her arms. "Then, even if you move off world, he'll decimate the whole system searching for answers."

"Then we're dead no matter what we do," Irani said.

Gamora looked away bitterly. "When Thanos wants something, he gets it. I…I'm sorry that your system was caught in the crossfire of his blind selfishness."

Irani gave a graceful dip of the head, even though she had to be grappling with the knowledge that her people were doomed. "If there is truly nothing that can be done to save this planet," she said stoically, "then we should do what we can to make sure the infinity stone is as far away from this place as possible."

Rhomann's eyes widened. "What? Ma'am—!"

"There is nothing we can do!" Irani snapped, a bit of her franticness slipping through. Then she paused, gathering her nerves. "Perhaps you misunderstand. I am  _not_ abandoning my people here to die, nor am I giving up on saving them. I am merely examining the situation and determining that right now, the best thing we can do for both our planet and for the rest of the universe is to make sure that the lives of our people are not sacrificed in vain. We  _must_  make sure the stone is placed in a safe place, far away from Thanos's reach. Once that happens, I will stay and do everything in my power to snatch Xandar from the jaws of perdition."

The room was gripped with a somber haze, as each one of them tried to reconcile themselves with the fact that Xandar could be gone after this. Quill swallowed down guilt and tried not to show it. Maybe if he'd flown better or faster, or gotten the ship prepared even a moment sooner, they would have arrived in time to get the stone off of Xandar, lure Thanos out, and save three million people.

But no—there was no time to agonize over the past while Thanos was out there in the present, seriously prepared to blast the entire planet to pieces.

"We have seventeen minutes," Rhomann reported. "What are we going to do?"

Gamora took a deep breath. Released it slowly. "We're going to trick him," she said finally.

"You have a plan?"

"I may." She stepped forward, brushing Rhomann aside and tapping at the screens to get a better look at Thanos's fleet. "The Black Order will be dropping in right outside the capital building and waiting for Irani to bring them the power stone. We're going to send her out as planned, and she's going to act like she intends to cooperate. But just as she's about to hand the orb over, I'm going to swoop in and steal it."

Quill stared. "I'm sorry, what?"

"You heard me," she said. "It's going to look like the Xandarians are trying to cooperate, and the Guardians are the ones fighting back. Thanos will target us instead of them. And he won't blow up the plant if he knows I'm here, since he still…" She trailed off, swallowing hard. "He still  _acts_  like he cares about me, like he wants to get me back. He'd rather chase me down and capture me than leave me for dead."

"That's putting a lot of faith in someone who's hellbent on murdering half the universe," Rocket snapped. "How do we know he won't threaten the planet as a way to force you into surrendering the stone?"

"Because he knows that  _I_ understand what he plans to do with that stone, and that I would do anything to stop him from getting his hands on it. If that means letting a planet die, then so be it. I'm not pleased, but…it's necessary."

Irani didn't speak, though those words couldn't have made her happy. She gave a short nod and refused to make eye contact.

Gamora went on, "Even if Thanos threatens the planet in response to our supposed theft, we can't falter. The stone can't be allowed to fall into his hands."

"And what about after you pretend to steal the stone?" Mantis asked. "What then?"

"I'm going to run, of course," Gamora said. "I'll take the orb and spring into the city, drawing their attention. As I keep their attention on the ground, the Nova Corps will send a few ships to attack the back of the blockade and draw several of the blockade ships to their location. That will create a gap, where Quill and the rest of you can slip out and head to Vormir."

"But you'll have the stone," Quill said. "Why would we go to Vormir without—?"

Gamora reached into the pouch at her belt and pulled out two identical orbs. She tossed one to Quill and said, "Because you'll have the power stone."

Quill stared down at the orb, uneasy. "The same trick we pulled on Yondu, huh?"

"Exactly. It worked once, and it will work again."

"Until you—what, ditch the orb so you can come back and leave with us? Then they'll know it was a trick and realize we're trying to escape!"

Gamora watched him steadily. "I'm not going to  _ditch the orb_ , Quill. I'm going to give you as much time as I can while you take the real orb and get off world."

"Wha—that is the most bullshit thing I've  _ever_  heard, Gamora, if you think we're going to just stand back and let you  _stay_  here—!"

"Quill," she said tensely, "you don't seem to understand what's at stake here. It has to be me, don't you understand? My being here will shock Thanos enough to give him pause, and he may even be drawn to the surface himself if he thinks he stands a chance at speaking with me and obtaining the stone at the same time. More than that, he  _won't_  kill me. You heard it yourself on Vormir. He'll capture me, lock me away, and eventually I'll escape and come back to you."

"But—"

She stepped forward, putting a calming hand on his shoulder. "Peter, please. You have to trust me."

His chest constricted. "You can't ask us to just  _leave_  you here. Just get the Black Order lost in the city and come back to leave with us!"

"You're going to need all the time you can get," she said. "If you wait for me, you could be caught and killed. This way, I'll spend a few months on Thanos's ship and find a way to break out."

"He might torture you. He'll know you have the location of the power stone."

"Then take it somewhere other than Vormir, and don't tell me where."

"He'll still think—!"

_"Quill,"_  she said, and he stopped. "I'm asking you to trust me here. I promise I'll be okay, and once I'm out I'll track you down and we can decide what to do next."

He shook his head, this awful, choking sensation rising in his throat. "Gamora…"

Her other hand rose, pressing to his cheek, and once again he was rendered speechless. "Please," she whispered. And despite the dark feeling festering in his stomach, Quill knew what the right choice was.

"We'll come back for you," he said, voice catching in his throat. "We'll make sure nothing bad happens."

She smiled. "I know you will."

Irani cleared her throat, catching their attention. "If you two are quite done, the clock has worn down to thirteen minutes. We need to discuss any remaining details of the plan and get everything in place."

"You're telling us," Rocket muttered, stepping toward the door. "Come on, you useless lot—we've got a titan to outsmart!"


	10. The Core

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy the chapter!

In a perfect world, there would have been time for a real goodbye before they parted ways. There would have been time for Quill to sit the team down and give some kind of rousing, motivational speech. There would have been time for them to come up with something,  _anything,_ that might give the people of Xandar a chance to escape.

There would have been time for Quill to at least give Gamora more than a hug before she double checked her weapons, nodded, and followed Irani to execute the plan.

"Be safe," he'd said, pulling her close for the single moment they had. "Just…don't let Thanos get to you, okay? He's a wrinkly son of a bitch that doesn't deserve you as a daughter or  _anything_  else, so if he starts trying to convince you to rejoin him you turn the other way and run as fast as you can."

There were a million things she could have said to put him down—that she wouldn't be able to run once she was captured, for one—but she'd just shaken her head and cupped his cheek and placed a soft kiss on his lips before drawing back and leaving.

Rhomann was left with the remaining Guardians, the guide to their hopeful escape. "We'll have to move fast," he said, leading them back down winding pathways and taking them to the doorway that would let them out onto the docking bay. "Get a few ships in the air to attack the blockade and draw their attention. Once we have reports that the Black Order fleet has converged on that spot, we'll have you guys in the air and through the blockade in no time at all."

Quill couldn't help a glance behind them, even though Gamora had left five minutes ago and there was absolutely no way to catch a glimpse of her. He kept waiting for her to jog after them and say that it had all been a lie, that she was going with them.

It didn't happen.

"We'll wait on the airfield," Rhomann said. "That way you won't have to waste a moment when we get the word."

"Yeah, yeah…" Quill shot another glance over his shoulder, distracted. "Wasting time is good."

"No, it's  _bad_. Are you sure you're up to this?"

He blinked. "What? Oh—yeah, of course I'm up to this! We'll make sure the stone gets far, far away from here."

The Guardians watched him, expressions ranging from irritation to worry.

"We've got to focus," Rocket said finally, tone gruff. "If we don't pull it together, we could be looking at more than just one destroyed planet. There's no room for error."

Quill shook himself, because he knew. He knew that they were all looking at him, wondering if he could handle leaving Gamora, and he had to act like he was okay.

"Calm down, you guys," he tried. "I'm trusting Gamora, right? She'll kick baldy's ass and get back to us without a scratch on her. Or we'll rescue her before that, you never know!"

Rhomann shook his head and said, "Dude, do you actually understand how serious this is? I know you care about the green chick, but if that stone falls into the wrong hands we could be facing universal annihilation."

"Hey," he said, hurt flashing through him. "I get it! I get how important this is, I just…" He shook himself again, trying to clear the negative thoughts. "Forget it. Let's get the power stone off the ground."

"We will, as soon as we get the signal." Rhomann tapped at some kind of mini monitor on his gauntlet, checking the positions of Thanos's blockade ships. "Come on, come on…"

The coms fizzed, and then Gamora was whispering,  _"The Black Order is on the ground. I repeat, the Black Order is on the ground! I'm going to move to steal the fake stone, and once I'm sure they've bought the trick you'll be cleared for takeoff. Just make sure the Nova Corps has created an opening in the blockade before you go!"_

Quill raised a finger to his ear. "Got it. Be…be careful, Gamora."

_"Always."_

The coms went dead, and from far away Quill heard the telltale rumble of a rather large explosion. Rhomann went pale, and his hand twitched like he wanted to contact Irani and make sure she'd lived. But he didn't, and all they did was stand there and watch as smoke started to plume from a mile away. A furious screech split the air. The next moment shots rang out, as the members of the Black Order presumably began to chase Gamora.

_"They've bought it,"_ Gamora said, sure enough.  _"Thanos will know I'm here now, so he'll be distracted. Get out of here as soon as you can!"_

Rhomann gave a sharp nod. "As soon as we get that signal."

More explosions, but they were getting fainter and fainter as Gamora led the Black Order away.

Rhomann's gauntlet beeped, and his expression lightened. "The blockade is being drawn out. Now's our chance!"

"Then let's move." Rocket scrambled up the ramp of the Nova Corps ship, and by the time Quill followed he was already sitting in the pilot's seat. "My turn!" he snapped when Quill raised his arms emphatically. "Step off, Quill!"

And because there wasn't time to argue, and because he didn't know how well he would fly when he was so worried about Gamora, he dropped into the copilot's seat and waited for Rocket to get them off the ground.

"I have a course plotted to Vormir," Rhomann said, leaning forward just long enough to get the navigation computer online. "Once we break the atmosphere, we'll slip through the crack in the blockade and jump out of range."

"Good." Quill double checked the computer and nodded in satisfaction. As long as those Black Order ships stayed where they were right now, they wouldn't have a problem. Just so long as nothing else went wrong.

They lifted into the air. All systems were nominal, the course was plotted, and the blockade ships were holding their position.

"So far so good," Rhomann said, shooting a glance out the viewport. No Black Order ships were after them, and none of the actual members seemed to have noticed the beginning of their escape. "Nothing is showing on the scanners that we don't already know about."

"Let's hope it stays that way," Drax said, watching the sky with a blank expression. He seemed steady, prepared to deal with whatever came their way. Quill wished he shared his resolve.

"We're approaching the planet's atmosphere," Rhomann said after a few minutes. "So far there's nothing— _hey!"_

The ship jolted.

"Oh, god.  _Again?"_

Rocket swooped around the next volley, coming from a Black Order ship that had presumably stopped by to drop their representatives in front of the capital building. They'd spotted the Nova Corps ship making for the upper atmosphere, and were now in pursuit.

_They must have left someone in the ship to scan for departing vessels,_ Quill thought as Rocket dipped and wove through the sky. "We can make it. Just throw the ship off and—!"

Another volley rang out from the opposite side, and a second Black Order ship appeared out of nowhere.

"They called reinforcements," Rhomann realized. "To make sure we couldn't get off world."

"Which means they might suspect something's up," Quill said, voice tight. "But—we can still do it, okay, we can blast through these assholes and get up there!"

More gunfire.

"The blockade knows about us now," Rocket snapped, wincing as lasers bounced off the side of the ship. "If we go up there we'll be destroyed!"

"The power stone has to be removed from Xandar!" Rhomann protested. "What else are we supposed to do but try?"

"Land and try again," Mantis said. "We can do this, we just can't do it now! Let's land and pick those ships off, then go back up somewhere else where they won't know we're coming!"

"But they'll be on high alert now, they—!"

"Land and try again!" Mantis repeated. "We can't give up, even if we can't do it the way we originally planned!"

"She's right," Drax said. "Let us not die now, forcing a plan that has been compromised! Let us return to the surface and come up with something new that will assure victory."

Quill grit his teeth. As much as he wanted to just blast through the ships and try to escape, he knew that they'd just be caught and killed. If the Black Order had spotted them, the blockade would be scanning from them. They couldn't slip through.

"Right, he said finally, accepting their fate. "We have to regroup and figure out where to go from here." He nodded to Rocket and said, "Take us down."

The Black Order ships pulled away the instant they dipped close to the ground. They didn't leave—they just hovered high in the air and watched, presumably waiting to see if they'd make another attempt at escape.

"They know we're going to get toasted either way," Quill said, watching them grimly. "They don't care if Thanos kills us on the planet or they kill us in the air."

"If they're not coming after us, they don't suspect anything's going on with the stone." Rhomann made for the ramp.

Quill followed suit. "What are we supposed to do? They're going to be watching the skies like a hawk, and we have to get the stone out of here!"

"Surely there's something!" Drax said, even though that was the same thing they'd all been saying about saving Xandar and it looked like there was nothing they could do. "If we can't escape, we're doomed."

"That's how escaping works, yes."

"Well…" Rhomann hesitated. "There…might be something."

"What? Why didn't you bring it up like five hours ago?"

He winced. "It's—Nova Prime ordered me to keep it quiet no matter  _what,_ because knowing could cause a planet-wide panic. It could wipe out the whole capital city. But at this point…I think she'd want me to tell you."

"What is it?" Rocket asked, tone dangerous.

Again he hesitated, trying desperately not to make eye contact. "There's…well, do you remember that guy we had you kidnap for us?"

Quill blinked. "The Kree dude? Yeah, of course."

"Well, we kind of didn't ask you to retrieve him because he was the  _leader,_ per say, but because we…um, needed him to help us deal with a little problem with our city's generators…?"

"I'm sorry,  _what?"_

"We just—there was some kind of inside job, something we thought had been done to our city's like,  _super_  powerful generator that was actually fashioned out of some of the same tech the Kree used. We thought the leader would know what the tampering entailed and how dangerous it was since he definitely ordered the tampering to happen in the first place, so we had you get him for us. It's—look, now it just sounds dumb because we didn't actually get any answers other than the fact that there  _was_ tampering that messed with the generator's dampeners, and we were in the process of fixing it but then the Kree leader kind of  _died_ for like,  _no_ reason—"

Quill pinched at the bridge of his nose. Now that he was looking back on it, he remembered how tense the Nova Corps had seemed upon the Guardians' arrival. "Okay, how is any of this going to help us?"

Rhomann took a deep breath. "The point is, when we got your transmission we were in the middle of dealing with a power apparatus that had become highly volatile. The dampeners were shot through, and it was maybe thirty minutes from exploding when we finally got it under control, but it was just a patch job. Actually, it's  _still_ a patch job. We replaced the dampeners, but they're kind of flimsy and the instant we mess with them even a little the whole thing is going to blow. We were actually making plans to evacuate the city if necessary, but we thought we had it under control long enough to find a permanent solution. But of course, then you showed up, so that's out the window."

It clicked.

"You think we can use that thing to blow a hole in the blockade?" Rocket asked.

Rhomann fidgeted.  _"Maybe._ It's super high risk; that thing is set to blow at any moment. But theoretically, if we could get it on a remote piloted ship we could take it up and aim it at the blockade. That would blow a hole right through it, and then we could slip through and maybe even get some of the transport ships in to save the people."

"It's a risk," Rocket said, looking to the rest of the Guardians. "But it sounds like our best chance." He shot a glance over his shoulder. "Right, Groot?"

"I am Groot…"

"Yeah, exactly! What about the rest of you; are we in agreement?"

"It does seem like the most favorable option," Mantis said. "If we can't get back in the air without being killed, I mean."

"Which we can't," Drax said. "I vote for the dangerous exploding plan."

"It's the safest way to do things, ironically." Quill looked back to Rhomann. "Where do we start?"

"In the core. Follow me."

 

* * *

 

Gamora had no idea if the rest of the Guardians were gone, or if they'd been captured and the real power stone was already being delivered to Thanos. All she knew was that she had to draw the Black Order out for as long as she could, giving them a chance at escape.

So she stayed down as Irani went out, orb in hand, to offer it to the Black Order representatives. She watched as those representatives landed (she recognized all of them—they were truly the worst of the worst) and approached Irani, weapons in hand. They exchanged words, and then Irani was reaching out and preparing to hand over the orb.

Gamora moved.

There wasn't much fuel left in all of their collective aero rigs, so she'd funneled it all into hers. She knew she'd need it for what she was doing, and indeed she did as she rocketed forward, leaving cover, and snatched the orb up just before Proxima could get her hands on it.

_"Gamora!"_

Of course Proxima would recognize her. But she didn't turn to speak with her former  _sister,_ as Thanos would call her. She checked her fuel, tucked away the orb, and sped off into the city as fast as she could.

And then she kept going.

_I hope Quill and the others are in the air by now._ She whipped around a building, explosions ringing out not too far behind as the Black Order fired at her. She had a head start, but for how long? The entire Black Order would be focused on her now, since they now believed she had the stone.

She was no fool—she knew that she could be volunteering for death, distracting the Black Order like this. She knew what she'd told Quill, about how Thanos wouldn't kill her because he'd want her back, about how he wouldn't lay a finger on her. But if he thought she had the stone…well, she wasn't entirely sure what he'd do. His vision meant everything to him, and she didn't trust him for one moment to keep her alive when she was standing in between him and that vision.

But that didn't matter now, when she'd already done it. If she'd doomed herself, so be it. All that mattered was that Quill and the rest of the Guardians made it out with the stone.

She really hoped they'd make it out.

"We know you have the stone!" yelled a familiar voice, and Gamora swore as she realized that the Black Order was catching up. She didn't want to use the rest of her fuel until she really needed it, so she was stuck sprinting between buildings and trying to throw them off while knowing perfectly well that it wasn't going to happen. "Hand it over and the planet will be spared!"

_Yeah, right!_ She scrambled behind the nearest building and risked a glance out from behind it. It looked like Proxima was the only one that was close, the others having branched off in what was probably a bid to surround her.  _Okay, I have to think—how can I get this orb as far away as possible while still maintaining their attention?_

She took a deep breath. She didn't know Xandar well, but she knew the city had to end eventually. If she made it to the edge and found some kind of forest or natural cover, she could hopefully throw them off a bit. At least enough to let the other Guardians escape.

Proxima was closing in. "Thanos is waiting for you to return, Gamora! Give up the stone and come with us, and you might have the honor of returning to his side!"

"Like hell I will," she hissed under her breath.  _Let's see…if I wait for her to pass I can loop around and try to make it to the edge of the city._

Proxima began to pass, and Gamora ducked around the side of the building to keep out of sight. "You've always been his  _favorite,"_ she snarled. _"_ Should you surrender now, you may get off with only a few lost limbs! You may even get some upgrades out of the situation, as your sister did. Though no one has seen her in months, so it's entirely likely that those upgrades have since sent her to her death."

Gamora paused.  _Nebula is off the grid?_

"He'll treat you well," Proxima went on, looking around carefully for where her target had fled. "He'll only break  _most_  of your bones, not all of them."

She held her breath as Proxima started to pass. The woman walked past the building, step by step, ears pricked. But she heard and saw nothing, and so she kept moving.

_She's leaving. She's—!_

"Well what do we have here?"

Gamora launched herself out of the way a heartbeat before the building exploded where her head had been a moment prior. She came up moving, scrambling to one side, flipping to the other, as shards of the building broke off and pelted her endlessly. Her movements were just enough to keep her from getting killed, but nothing more.

The man Gamora recognized as Ebony Maw smiled at her, smug and self-assured as always. "A lost sister has returned to us," he said. "And she's brought us an infinity stone as well!"

She took a step back, turned, and saw that Proxima had been drawn by the explosions. Her spear was out in front of her, a sneer on her face.

Ebony Maw reached out a hand. "You went through all the trouble of bringing it to us—let me carry it for the final leg of its journey to Thanos. It's the least I can do."

She recoiled. Where was the way out of this situation? Proxima at her back, Ebony Maw at her front…both incredibly powerful and near impossible to best at the same time.

_At least the other two aren't here yet. Though with the noise, they could be here at any moment._

Ebony Maw narrowed his eyes. "Give me the stone. I won't ask again."

She took a step back. "I can't give it to you." And there was no justification she could give that would make him understand, because his whole life was dedicated to killing anyone and destroying anything that would aid Thanos's conquest of the universe.

His expression didn't shift. "Very well."

There was no warning. One moment Gamora was standing there, trying to anticipate the first attack, and the next she was jumping up to dodge the spear Proxima was trying to stab through her middle. Her foot cracked down on the shaft of the spear, the rubber of her boots absorbing the electricity and pinning the weapon to the ground. Her other leg lashed out, nailing the hand Proxima had on her weapon. When the spear dropped she flipped, reaching for her sword and slicing the woman in the side while she was still reeling.

Sharpened points of concrete whistled by her head. Ebony Maw, using his powers to try and take her head off. One of the chips caught her in the shoulder, tearing her outfit and leaving a shallow scratch that made her hiss. She slid behind Proxima, and the woman roared as a few of those concrete shards dug into her flesh.

"Watch it!" Proxima shrieked, trying to get out of the way and reclaim her spear at the same time. But Gamora was faster, smashed a boot into her back and shoved the spear out of her reach. Then, as she tried to reorient herself, Gamora whipped behind the nearest building and ran as fast as she could.

Maw was right behind her. Unlike her, he didn't need fuel to fly—and he demonstrated that now, sipping into the air and overtaking Proxima in a snap. "The stone!" he yelled, a demand that Gamora refused to hear. She held her sword up to Maw's next attack, deflecting the shards of steel and asphalt and only taking one to the thigh. It stung, but she yanked it out without pausing and kept pushing.

_This is good. I'm ahead of them, I can make it!_

Except that was when there was a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye, and then she was being run down by the living equivalent of a brick wall.

Cull Obsidian hit her hard, shoulder aimed square into her stomach, and she had to scramble to not be thrown down beneath him and trampled. She stabbed her sword into the back of his shoulder as he moved, but that only made him roar and try to throw her down even harder. The only thing that saved her was the nails of her right hand digging into his uniform, hauling herself up before he could stomp on her. She flipped up over his shoulder and landed hard, ribs bruised, knee throbbing, scrapes littering the side Cull had plowed into.

Cull thundered past her, crashing into a building and nearly taking it to the ground. As he picked himself up, Gamora turned and tried to make for another way out. But of course that was when a familiar scythe whipped past her, embedding in the ground and stopping her from taking another step.

_Corvus Glaive._

That was the last of the four most powerful members of the Black Order, all of them slowly driving her into a corner so they could kill her and retrieve the stone.

Corvus shook his head at her, disapproving. "Give up, sister. You can't escape the Black Order."

"I'm  _not_ your sister," she snapped, taking a step back and shooting a glance over her shoulder. Cull was beginning to pick himself out of the wrecked building, taking up his hammer and slinging it over one shoulder. "And I'm not giving you the stone."

Corvus narrowed his eyes. "Then we'll kill you, and remove it from your corpse."

She bared her teeth and snapped, "I'd like to see you try."

"Very well."

Proxima and Maw were drawing up on either side. Cull was behind her. Corvus was in front of her.

She was surrounded.

"This is your last chance," Maw said, raising a hand as if to strike her down in the event of her refusal. "Hand over the stone and we'll let you live to see Thanos."

Her grip tightened on her sword. The other hand inched to her belt, to the handle of her blaster.

The others closed in, step by step, expressions dark. "Gamora," Maw said. "Give me the stone."

She tensed.  _Just a bit longer. Let them close in._

Step by step, bit by bit, they approached.

_Almost…_

"Sister!" Maw repeated, infuriated.

_In three…two…_

"Gamora!"

_…One._

She whipped her hand out, firing wildly on the Black Order, sword already raised to stop the impending shrapnel blasted her way. Her aero rig sputtered a bit as she went to take off, and she held her breath for the single moment it took to get her in the air—but once that moment passed she was flying, whirling through the air to avoid the attacks she knew were headed her way.

Someone yelled, "Bring her down!" And the next moment Corvus's scythe was whirling by her and Cull was hurling his hammer through the air, and Proxima was chucking her spear and Maw was bringing down the buildings around her so they would crush her as she flew under them.

Gamora twisted to one side as one of those buildings nearly crushed her, the remaining weapons bouncing off the collapsing steel and stone. It was just enough of a gap for her to dart behind a building that  _wasn't_ falling over and take off as fast as she could through the city.

She looked up. The sky was darkening, giving way to night, so she guessed it had to have been at least a half hour since she'd started running. If everything had gone according to plan, Quill and the others should be outside the system by now.

"Quill?" she whispered, hand at her earpiece. "Quill, can you hear me?" If he didn't respond then he was out of range, which would mean the stone was out of Thanos's reach. If he didn't respond then everything was going according to—

_"Gamora? Hey! Yeah, yeah I hear you!"_

…According to plan.

"You're still here?" she snapped, furious and terrified all in one. "Quill, what the hell is going on? You were supposed to be on your way to Vormir by now!"

_"Yeah, well—something's gone kind of wrong, so we have to pull back and go with this crazy plan Rhomann came up with."_

"What other plan?" If it was anything Quill had had a hand in, she didn't like their chances.

_"Well it's a little insane, so don't freak out! Apparently the city's main generator was like, tampered with by the Kree before we got here, and they were in the middle of trying to figure out how to stop it from exploding and destroying a good chunk of the planet. Rhomann thinks we might be able to take that generator, get it into space, and wreck a portion of the blockade. Then we can slip right out with the stone while they're still reeling."_

"That's…" She paused, stomach flipping. "That's absolutely insane. Quill, if anything goes wrong you could drop that thing back on the city and kill us all!"

_"And if we don't then Thanos will also kill us all, so this is our best bet! Come on, Gamora, you have to trust me too. We can't get out with the original plan, and this is the best we've got."_

"It's still insane," she said. Throwing a glance behind her, she didn't see even a trace of the Black Order. She was ahead of them.

_"…Yeah. Yeah, I know. But we're going to do this, so just keep them distracted for as long as you can! Who knows, if this goes well we might even be able to swing by and pick you up before we escape."_

"Quill, no. I have to keep them distracted so you can escape, we've been over this! If they see me get on your ship they'll just take us down. If I'm here, they won't be nearly as worried about one ship slipping through the cracks."

There was a pause. Then,  _"I know. Believe me, I know."_

Gamora's chest tightened and she said, "I'll be safe. Just promise me you'll get off this planet as fast as you can."

_"…I will. Good luck, Gamora."_

"Good luck, Quill. We'll speak soon."

The coms went dead, and Gamora put her mind back to escaping. The Black Order was still far away, so she slowed to keep quieter. By the look of things, she was running back toward the capital building. With any luck she could make it to the edge of the city and slip into the surrounding wilderness.

There was a crash from maybe a mile behind her, the Black Order searching for the stone.

She didn't have much time.

 

* * *

 

"This is an incredibly delicate process, okay? One wrong move and the generator will explode, so we have to make sure we take every precaution to—"

There was a shower of sparks, and Quill turned to see Rocket holding a knife and a bunch of frayed wires.

_"Hey!"_ Rhomann scrambled back, terrified, waiting for the entire thing to blow up. "What is  _wrong_ with you, did you not hear me say that the generator will explode if we're not careful?"

"Well yeah," Rocket said, throwing the wires to one side and moving to slice through the next set. "But we don't have time to sit around and do this the right way with Thanos's army trying to kill us! We have to get this thing in the air as fast as we can, and this is the only way." He sliced again, and more sparks sprayed the ground.

"He's right," Quill said. "Either we get this on a ship and up to the blockade, or being blown up here and now will probably be more merciful than what happens to us."

"What a pleasant thought," Drax grumbled, working to unscrew the generator from the base as Rocket finished up with the wiring. Mantis was at the top, working on the bolts keeping the thing affixed to the ceiling.

"The generator is so big!" Mantis said, looking it up and down as she worked. "How will it fit on the ship?"

"Well this is just the shell," Rhomann said. "The interior is actually full of these subunits that we can load onto a ship. I'll have it remotely controlled to fly up to the blockade."

"And what about the ships that shot us down last time? They'll shoot this ship down too, and it'll blow up the city!"

Rhomann shook his head. "Won't happen, because we're going to set the ship to warp up to the blockade."

Rocket's head jerked up. "That's insane. You know that's insane, right? No one could survive passing the planet's atmosphere while in warp! The ship would get so hot that the interior would turn into an oven!"

"No person  _will_  survive," Rhomann said. "It'll be unmanned. The casings of the subunits are heat resistant, so nothing should happen until they reach space and we set them off remotely."

"And I suppose you have a way of setting them off remotely?"

"I do, actually—but first we have to get those subunits out of the generator."

Mantis gave the top one good push, and then it popped out of its place and tilted slightly. "The top is free!"

"I've almost undone the base." Drax finished with the last screw, and then he was catching the large, cylindrical generator as it tried to fall over. He lowered it down gently, and Rocket got to work on getting the back panel open.

When that panel opened, Quill was shot through with worry. The subunits were about the size of bricks, a dull green light shining from what had to be radioactive material in the center. He could already see the dampeners Rhomann had spoken of, wired around the corners and edges of the subunit. They looked damaged—a patch job, as Rhomann had said. If anything went wrong, it was over for all of them.

Rocket oh so carefully removed the subunit on top, examining it tensely. "This is serious stuff. We sure we know what we're doing here?"

"Oh," Quill said, "we have absolutely no idea what we're doing. Rhomann, let's get a move on."

They began to unpack the subunits. There looked to be about twenty of them in total, and they set them all out side by side. All of the dampeners were sparking and fragile, ready to snap at a moment's notice, and it was giving Quill a heart attack just looking at them. They'd have to move quickly.

"I have the ship on remote control already," Rhomann said. "It's waiting for us in the holding bay next to that airfield we landed in, so let's grab two subunits each and load them up."

Quill gingerly picked up one of the subunits, looking it over. He didn't even want to be touching the thing, and he held it away from his body as if that would protect him if it went off. Then he picked up a second, giving it the same treatment.

Rocket reached for one, then stopped to catch Groot as he tried to pick up one of his own. "Hey, no—Groot, don't you dare! You're not old enough to be handling the incredibly dangerous exploding devices!"

"I am Groot!"

"I don't care, you don't get to touch the subunits!"

Groot stuck out his tongue at him, but retreated back into Rocket's pack so just the tip of his head stuck out. Rocket scooped up the explosives, the others followed suit, and then they were leaving. The generator room was on the lowest level, far below ground, and the walk to the surface was tense and miserable. No one knew when one of those dampeners might go out and the subunits might explode.

"We'll have to do this  _now_ ," Rhomann said as they approached the surface. "We'll have to leave cover to get to the holding bay, but with any luck Gamora will have the Black Order far, far away from here."

They reached the doors to the outside, and Quill peered out to make sure none of Thanos's goons were around to shoot at them and blow up the whole city. Seeing nothing, they went.

They strapped the subunits into the ship, making sure there was no room for them to roll around before they set them off remotely. Then Rhomann did something, attached some kind of transponder to the subunit tied to the pilot's seat, and told them that everything was set.

"There's exactly one Nova Corps ship left to escape in, so we'd better hope this works or we won't get another shot." Rhomann checked everything one last time and nodded. "We have to move."

 

* * *

 

Gamora had nearly reached the edge of the city. The Black Order wasn't far behind, catching up minute by minute, but she still had the lead and she intended to use it. She didn't know what was beyond the city—whether it be a forest or a lake or flatlands—but whatever it was, it was better than being where she was. She needed to lure the Black Order out as far as possible.

But of course, it was never that simple.

It happened when she was nearing the final set of buildings. She was sprinting, feet beginning to ache, chest heaving, when there was this flash of light and a shock wave that threw her to the ground. Then footsteps, heavy and terrifying, and she rolled over and scrambled to her feet, prepared to fight whichever member of the Black Order had just found her. She blinked, vision clearing, and raised her sword to strike down—

Her blood ran cold.

"Gamora."

She wanted to step back, but she was frozen. She could barely breathe.

Thanos took a step forward. "My daughter. You can run from the Black Order, but not from me."

She tried again, and this time she managed one tiny step backward. But he just mirrored it, one step for each one of hers, and soon enough she was backed into a corner.

"You can't run," Thanos said again, expression gentle but stern. He held out a hand, and Gamora jumped. "Now…give me the stone, and this can all be over."


	11. Capture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Picked up Infinity War on DVD yesterday, and DAMN. I'd forgotten how good it was. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go watch it five more times.

The ship is in the air!" Rhomann announced. "I'm starting the warp engines now. It won't be nearly as effective without an actual jump point and a wormhole, but I can push this thing so fast the Black Order won't be able to shoot it down in time." He tapped at the controller, this pane of glass with lots of flashing lights and buttons and dials.

"If this works, we're home free." Quill eyed the ship from the holding bay. They'd wheeled it out onto the runway, and the Black Order ships were nowhere in sight to destroy it before it could leave the ground. That was an incredible stroke of luck, and Quill hoped the rest of the mission went even half as smoothly.

The ship rose into the air and angled toward where the blockade would be. If it wasn't perfectly pointed in the right direction, they might blow the whole thing.  _Literally_.

"I'm starting the warp engines," Rhomann said. "In three…two…one…"

The entire building shook, and in the blink of an eye the ship vanished.

Rhomann kept his eyes on the controller. At the top was a display showing the ship's location as it approached the blockade. "It's getting close. I can blow the ship as soon as it gets in range. Just a few more moments…and… _now!"_

Rhomann smashed on the controller, and the signal went out.

It took a moment. Quill wasn't sure it was going to work from such a long distance, wasn't sure they were going to make it out. But then there was this shock wave, a ripple so strong they felt it on the ground, and Quill looked up to see a web of fire and flashing lights lacing across the sky. If it was bright and loud enough to reach them all the way where they were, it had to be a complete mess out in space.

Rhomann gave a sharp nod. "The blockade should be toast. Let's get up there and take the stone to Vormir!"

"And how are we supposed to get up there?" Mantis asked, bristling with tension. "The blockade is gone, but the Black Order ships are still in the area scanning for people trying to escape! They'll try to shoot us down again."

Quill's expression hardened. "We're going to go up there and we're going to dodge those Black Order ships, and we're going to find a jump point and go through it. We're not going to let the Black Order bring us down before we breach the atmosphere. We—!"

He broke off as a great rumbling filled the air, and the two Black Order ships from earlier streaked after the ship they'd just hurled into space. In pursuit, but a minute too late.

"That takes care of that," Drax said. "Come, let us depart at once while they're still distracted!"

They scrambled for the airfield. The ship was waiting, the Black Order ships were gone, and there was a tiny ray of hope as they got aboard and Quill slid into the pilot's seat. He started the engines, got the ship in the air, and it seemed like they were going to make it up.

Then Quill paused. "Wait."

"Quill," Rocket snapped, "we don't have  _time_  to wait!"

"But—but we're about to leave, so why don't we just swing by and grab Gamora? Then we can head straight up, get through the blockade, and be home free!"

"Thanos still thinks she has the stone; she has to stay here and distract him or we're done for!" Rocket punched him in the shoulder furiously. "Let's  _move_ , idiot!"

He wanted to stay. But then he remembered Gamora, furious at the prospect of him coming back for her, and he knew what he had to do. He clenched his jaw, grabbed the controls, and pushed the ship toward the planet's atmosphere.

They broke the atmosphere and shot into space, and the world was a firestorm around them.

 

* * *

 

"Gamora," Thanos said. "Give me the stone."

She bared her teeth, giving the appearance of strength even as she was filled with a conflicted mixture of terror and sorrow. She knew how powerful her father was. She knew what he could do, knew how he could tear through entire planets without breaking a sweat.

She wouldn't stand a chance. But she had to hold him off for as long as possible, to keep Quill and the others safe.

"I can't," she said, turning to put her body in between the orb and Thanos. "I know what you'll do with it, and it's not right."

"My daughter, how can it be wrong? You've seen firsthand the suffering that occurs in this universe, and you  _know_  that my plan will work to bring about the end of that suffering. So please…give me the stone. Do the right thing for the people of this universe."

"You mean the people you're going to kill?"

"I mean the people I'm going to save."

"Exchanging half the people in this universe to save the other half isn't  _saving._ It's  _killing_."

Thanos sighed, lowering his hand. "Perhaps it's asking too much, for you to understand. But please…now I'm only requesting that you trust me, and that you hand over the stone so that I can save this universe from itself."

But again, she turned away. "I can't give it to you." She reached for her sword, holding it aloft, and Thanos's expression turned pained. "You'll have to fight me if you want to take it!"

"Gamora…don't make me do this."

"You're the one making this happen,  _not_ me. If you cared, you'd walk away now!"

He shook his head. "I  _do_  care, and that is precisely the problem. I can't allow you to stand in between me and the salvation of the universe. So this is your last chance. Give me the stone, or I will have no choice."

Gamora's mouth suddenly felt very dry. "Are you going to kill me?"

"No…I could never kill my favorite child. I'm merely going to try and help you understand that what I'm doing is right."

She didn't like the sound of that. Her grip tightened on her sword, and she prepared for a fight.

Thanos seemed to sense her resolve. He sighed, shaking his head, and said, "I'm not going to fight you, my daughter."

"You're—not?"

"Of course not," he said simply. "But I'm afraid I am going to take the stone back with me, and you along with it."

Gamora had half a second to blink before Thanos was moving too quickly for her to follow. He crushed her to the ground, grim determination writ large across his face, and her world went dark a moment later.

 

* * *

 

The blockade was in tatters.

Quill emerged in to space to see a firestorm of shrapnel ruined ships. The bomb had torn right through the blockade, destroying at least six ships and leaving a wide-open gap from which they were to escape. The jump point wasn't far beyond that, and then they'd be home free. There would be no way to track them through the wormhole.

"Sucks for them," Rocket snorted, watching the chaos. There were no reinforcements on the way, and it didn't look like anyone could even see the escaping ship through the mess.

They kept going, and Quill reached for his earpiece without thinking. "Hey, Gamora? Do you read me?"

Nothing.

"Gamora? Gamora, we're off the planet's surface and heading for the jump point. We're safe, so we'll be back for you as soon as…"

He trailed off. The earpiece was transmitting nothing but static, and he was beginning to realize that she wasn't going to respond. His stomach flipped.

"She's not answering?" Mantis asked nervously. "Has she been captured?"

"Or killed," Rocket said. Then, seeing the horrified look Quill was giving him, "Or captured! Definitely captured."

Quill looked back out the viewport, insides churning with nervousness. He hoped Gamora had just been captured, but he was well aware that it could be far worse than that. If she wasn't responding…

"The jump point is approaching," Rocket said, eyeing the monitors. "We're almost home free."

Quill wouldn't let himself hope just yet. Up until they actually hit that point, anything could go wrong.

He held his breath as they got closer and closer. The power stone was an impossible weight in his pocket, a crushing reminder that if he was caught the entire universe would pay. They were  _so close…_

His earpiece fizzed, and his heart leapt. "Gamora! Gamora, is that you? You scared us; where are you? Are you okay?"

_"I'm afraid my daughter is otherwise occupied."_

Quill's heart nearly stopped.

The voice droned in his ear,  _"Forgive me for the intrusion—Quill, is it? I would be more than happy to let you escape this place, but I'm afraid you're rather valuable to me as a captive. My daughter cares for you, after all, and you will be extremely convincing in my desire for her to stand at my side once again."_

His voice shook. "Well if you think we're turning around and surrendering, you're dead wrong. You're too late to stop us, and we  _will_  come back for Gamora."

Rocket pricked an ear. "Who is that?"

He didn't answer. Instead he snapped, "You'd better not lay a finger on her, because when we come back I'm going to make you pay for  _every_  scratch. Do you hear me?"

Thanos laughed.  _"I hear you loud and clear, Peter Quill. I like your style. But I'm afraid that escaping is off the table."_

"What—?"

The whole ship jolted, stuttered, and stopped moving.

"What the hell?" Rocket snapped. "We're not moving! I'm firing the engines—what's going on?"

Rhomann paled and pointed to one of the smaller displays. "Proximity alert," he whispered, terrified. "Something's got ahold of us."

Now it was Quill's turn to go pale, as he understood. "Thanos."

_"What?"_

Quill whipped around. "Can we break free? Rhomann, you know this ship better than we do—how do we break free?"

"We—we don't, I'm sorry, the engines are at full blast! We're caught!"

"There has to be some way of breaking away!"

"I—"

The ship jolted again and began to move backward.

"He's pulling us in," Drax observed, tense. "Is there nothing that can be done?"

There was a response, but Quill was focusing on Thanos's voice.  _"I'm sorry,"_ he was saying, tone one of attempted comfort.  _"I truly wish I could let you keep your freedom, but the universe is at stake. I hope you understand."_

The ship kept moving. The others were yelling, scrambling, trying to figure out how to escape, but Quill knew. He knew there was nothing they could do to stop it.

Thanos drew them in, and it was over.

 

* * *

 

_"Don't panic,"_ Quill had said when they'd landed in the docking bay of Thanos's ship.  _"Stay calm. We'll figure it out, right? Rocket's broken out of like a million prisons, and he can break out of this one."_

But still there was panic—there was a  _lot_  of panic—and the entire process of being boarded, cuffed, and thrown out of the Nova Corps ship was a lot more tense and awful than Quill would have liked. He would have liked for them not to have been there at all, honestly. He would have liked that a lot.

The Black Order was there, grim and tight-lipped, making sure they were thoroughly bound and dragging them off to some place on Thanos's warship.

"Search them for weapons," one of the goons said once they reached where they were going—a lower level that looked like a prison. "Make sure they're not hiding anything!"

And Quill panicked a little, because he had the orb and he knew the Black Order would recognize it immediately. He had to distract them.

He wasn't sure how it happened. They were searching him, shoving their hands in his pockets and looking for any hidden pouches, and then they weren't because Drax had just punched a guard and the others were on him, hitting him back and taking him straight to the ground, and by the time they all got up they'd forgotten that they hadn't finished with Quill. When he looked to Drax, he winked through a puffy eye. It had been a ploy, and it had worked.

They were thrown into cells.

"This isn't going to last," Rhomann said through gritted teeth. "We got by without them finding the stone this time, but it won't happen a second."

"We need a way out," Rocket agreed. Groot was in his lap, curled up and miserable and silent, and Rocket's hand rested comfortingly on his back.

"Well what do you have in the way of a plan?" Quill asked. His hand was on the orb as if to make sure it hadn't vanished in the time since they'd been thrown into the cell together. "You've broken out of a lot of prisons, right?"

"Yeah, but this isn't some rinky-dink prison with three guards and a rec area without a fence. This is  _Thanos's warship_. Getting out of here alive will be a miracle."

Quill said, "And we're good at miracles right? Let's figure something out now." But even as he said it, he didn't feel very hopeful. He felt like it was over. They'd missed the reality stone by a week, they'd failed to retrieve the soul stone, and now they'd failed to protect the power stone.

It felt hopeless.

"They still don't know they have a fake orb," Mantis said shakily. "What happens when they find out?"

No one answered. Quill was beginning to get tired of thinking about all of the horrible things that might happen to them in the next twenty-four hours.

Rocket swore, kicking uselessly at the ground. "We're screwed," he said miserably. "No way out. All we can do is sit here and wait to die."

Groot shuffled around a bit. "I am Groot?"

"Not now, Groot. Let's just…be quiet for a while."

He shook his head. "I am Groot!"

"What—there  _is_  no way out, genius, what's so hard to understand about that?"

Groot shook his head again, more urgently. "I am  _Groot_."

"The—the backpack? Whatever, fine, have at it!" Rocket took his backpack off, which had been stripped of pretty much everything during the search, and chucked it in Groot's direction.

Groot wasted no time. He got into the pack, legs hanging out the top, scuffling around for something. Quill had no idea what.

"What are you doing?" Rocket demanded, the noise catching his attention. "What could possibly be in there that would _—oh my god!"_

The reaction was universal. Everyone jumped back, horrified, as Groot popped back out of the bag holding one of the explosive subunits.

"What the hell is that doing in there?" Quill yelled, pressing his back against the wall of the cell as if that would protect him from the blast. "Groot,  _how_  did you sneak that past the guards?"

He smiled and held it up. "I am Groot!"

Rocket dropped his head into his hands. "The backpack has—it has a false bottom."

Drax narrowed his eyes. "What universe are we living in where Groot has the presence of mind to hide something like that in the false bottom of your pack?"

"I don't know," Rocket snapped, "but we're in it now! Groot,  _give me that!"_

"I…am Groot?"

"Wha—no, no, you're not in  _trouble_  exactly, it's just…" He hesitated.

Rhomann raised a brow. "Do you think we can use that thing to help us get out of here? I mean now that it's here we might as well try, right?"

"The blast will kill us if we try to set it off, right?" Mantis eyed the thing nervously. "Maybe we should leave it alone."

"If we don't try we'll be killed," Quill reasoned. "Now come on, guys, how do we use it?"

Rocket approached the bars of the cell, sticking his head out and looking around. "Throw it?"

"We'll still be in the blast radius."

"Well what the hell else are we supposed to do?"

Quill looked outside. The cell they were in was at the very front, and out in the hallway and immediately to the left there was this doorway and then a long, slanted hallway they'd been marched down to get there. "How about we try to throw it down the hallway? The collision should damage the dampeners on the subunit, and in a few minutes it should go off."

"It should," Rhomann agreed, "but those things are powerful! We still might be killed."

"Well it seems like our best bet. If we're lucky it'll slide far enough down the hallway before detonating, and just barely damage this cell enough for us to get out."

" _If_ ," Rocket repeated. "Come on, then, throw it!"

Quill startled. "What, me? You want  _me_  to decide our fate?"

"You're just as inept as any of the rest of these idiots," Rocket said, "and I don't have the long arms necessary for this kind of thing."

Quill gulped. "Well the most experience I have comes from this little league baseball team I was on for like three weeks, so…here goes nothing, I guess."

If Gamora had been there, she would have smacked him and told him to take things more seriously. But she wasn't, so he had to tell  _himself_  to take a deep breath and survey the landscape and figure out how to throw the subunit to avoid being immediately killed.

He picked the right angle, tightened his grip, and stuck his arm out through the bars. Then he swung his arm once, twice—and threw.

Everyone held their breath. The subunit flew through the door, curved, and banged into the ground inside that branching hallway they couldn't quite see. For a moment there was nothing, and Quill thought it wasn't bouncing down the hallway and that it would blow up then and there and kill them all. But then the silence was broken by the sound of metal clanging on metal, growing fainter and fainter, and Quill let his breath out.

Then, one minute later…the explosion.

They weren't quite out of the blast radius. One moment they were sitting against the far wall and the next they were yelling, shielding their faces as the other wall of the cell was blown in.

Alarms blared, lights flashed, and Quill picked the shrapnel out of his arms and torso. Nothing dire, but every puncture stung.

"We have to move!" Rocket yelled as everyone tried to get up, shake off the metal and concrete, and make sure they weren't severely injured. "Those guards will be down here at any moment, and we have to get lost by then!"

"The ship is huge," Quill said as he moved to the destroyed wall and peeled back enough of the shrapnel to create a person-sized hole. "Where do we go?"

Rhomann stepped out and looked around them, eyes wide. "Well…the escape pods are usually on the lowest level, right? And the prison is also pretty low, so all we have to do is get as close to the bottom of the ship as we can and search."

"Any better plans?" Rocket looked from face to face. Then, when no one said anything, "Then let's get moving!"

They barely missed the guards, running down side passages and ducking behind walls whenever they heard someone coming. There were lots of flashing lights and noise that helped them hide as they tried to find some kind of elevator or staircase to take them down.

"This isn't working," Quill hissed finally. "We can't duck the guards forever and we're getting nowhere! We—!"

His earpiece fizzed.

Quill held his breath. If Thanos was listening for clues as to their location, he didn't want to give anything away.

But then,  _"Quill!"_

His heart leapt. "Gamora?"

_"Quill, you idiot, what are you doing aboard? Thanos told me that he captured you!"_

"What—hey, what are  _you_ doing aboard? You should have escaped, not been captured!"

_"This was the plan! You knew I—!"_  Then she huffed, breaking off as she realized she was wasting time _. "Look, something exploded and I managed to break free in the confusion. You're in the detention level, right? I'm coming to get you out."_

Rocket pressed a finger to his own earpiece and said, "Yeah, that explosion was us! We're free and running around like total idiots looking for escape pods."

_"What? Rocket! You have to stay right where you are and hide; I can find you and take you to the pods! Your ship is toast, but we can get away in those pods and send them into the wormhole. So stay put, and I'll find you!"_

"Gam—!" But she'd already ended the transmission, and the Guardians plus Rhomann were left in stunned silence.

"Okay," Mantis said, "let's hide and wait for her!"

But it wasn't as easy as it sounded. Staying in one place was the best way to be found, so they ended up shuffling around awkwardly to avoid the guards until suddenly there was a familiar voice at the end of the hall, and all the tension melted right out of them.

"You're here!" Gamora called, eyes wide. She seemed mostly unharmed, but there was a nasty scrape below her eye and blood crusted around her side. And of course, Quill had no idea what was going on internally. For all he knew, she had a set of broken ribs or a cracked femur or any number of painful injuries not perceptible to the naked eye.

"Are you okay?" Quill demanded, reaching for her as she approached.

Gamora shook him off and said, "I'm fine! We don't have time to talk; we have to get out of here!"

"What about Thanos? Where is he?"

"Looking for you," she said, "so let's make sure he doesn't find us." She held up one hand, and Quill saw she was holding the same orb she'd used to trick the Black Order. "He hasn't opened it. He still thinks it's real."

"Why did you take it?" Rocket demanded. "Now he'll be searching even harder for you, and us by extension!"

"Because, I…" Her expression twisted, like she didn't want to tell the truth. "We might need it."

"Why—?"

Gamora cut him off. "Come on, let's move! We don't have time for this." She tucked the orb back into her pocket and ushered them along. "The pods are three floors up. You're lucky I'm here; this place is as large as a small moon. You'd never find anything without me."

Normally there would have been a snappy response to that, but everyone was too tense. There were still guards everywhere and lots of loud sirens and the very real possibility of being captured, and no one wanted to joke around.

"We'll take an elevator," Gamora whispered, leading them from hallway to hallway, hiding place to hiding place. "I know the override codes; we can make it to the pods without being stopped."

They crossed another hallway. Gamora gestured, and they crossed another.

Then, gunfire.

Quill swore, jumping behind a wall just in time. "Gamora, they've spotted us!"

Her expression went dark. "How many?"

"All of them, soon!"

She nodded and said, "Then run."

So that was what they did. The whole ship was reaching high alert, gunfire bouncing off the walls, guards yelling for reinforcements. When the Guardians rounded that final corner and saw the elevator, it felt like a miracle.

"In!" Gamora yelled, sprinting forward and wrenching the doors open. There was no elevator car, and she tensed before reaching out and grabbing the cable. "We'll have to climb!"

"What? Are you insane, the elevator—!"

"Is below us!" she finished, sheathing her sword and leaping out. She grabbed onto the cable and started to slide down, aiming for an elevator Quill couldn't see. Rocket and Groot went next. Then Mantis, then Rhomann, then Drax, then Quill—dodging that final shot and slamming the doors shut behind them.

Quill heard it when the elevator approached. Gamora called out a warning, landing on the thing as it whisked upward. Rocket landed, followed by everyone else, and then Quill's boots were planted firm against the top of the elevator. Gamora was already sliding her blade under the top panel, prying it up, and in a moment she'd popped the thing open and was dropping into the main chamber. The inhabitants yelled, choked, and went quiet.

"All clear!" Gamora called.

Quill dropped in last, and winced when he saw the bodies of the guards. Gamora had sliced their heads clean off, and blood lapped at the soles of his boots and kissed the hem of his coat. Any other time he would have made a snarky comment, but now he was dead silent.

Gamora tapped at the elevator buttons. "It's going straight up three floors," she said. "No stops, no matter what. Once we're there we'll get out and run straight for the pods."

"How far do we have?" Rhomann asked.

"Not long."

The elevator whirred and kept moving. Then it came to a halt, opened, and they were off again.

The guards had no idea where they were going, so they weren't there when they stepped out. There was the odd person walking the halls, but Gamora made short work of them and kept running.

The ship rumbled.

"Do you hear that?" Quill asked, out of breath.

"It's nothing," Gamora said. "Keep moving!"

The ship rumbled again, like more explosions were going off. Or, the aftermath of the large explosion? A chain reaction that hadn't yet petered out?

Gamora looked up like she was alarmed, but said nothing. They kept moving until—

There was this loud, awful sound like tearing metal, and then something was crashing down in front of Quill and almost cutting him in two. Dust flew, concrete crumbled, metal shrieked, and by the time things cleared Quill was lying face down on the floor.

"Quill! Quill, are you okay?"

He looked up to see Gamora trying to peel him off the ground, expression one of pain and alarm. Her hands were on his shoulders. "Gamora? Wha…?"

"The ceiling was blown in," she explained. "I'm not sure if it was an aftershock or another explosion from somewhere above, but it's happened now and we have to move!"

Quill staggered to his feet, a bit dazed, and saw that there was a huge sheet of metal sealing off one half of the hallway. "Where are the others?"

"We're here, you idiot!"

He blinked. "Is the wall talking?"

Gamora pinched at the bridge of her nose and said, "We're cut off, genius. The hallway is collapsed all the way down, and we're the only two on this side." Then, to Rocket on the other side, "We'll have to meet each other at the pods! There's a way around from your side, so listen to me carefully and I can give you the directions!"

Gamora gave those directions, and Quill brushed himself off and looked around. The whole hallway was wrecked, splitting off in two, and he realized all at once that there really was no way to reunite. Even in the next room, everything was caved in. They'd have to go around.

"Got it," Rocket said once he had the instructions. "Let's move!"

"If you make it, leave without us!" Gamora ordered. "We'll follow once we get there."

There was a sharp knock from the other side. "Got it. Good luck, you two!"

"Good luck," Gamora echoed. Then, to Quill, "Come on."

They ran.


	12. Terra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo, last chapter! I hope you guys like the ending!
> 
> As usual, there should be a one week break between this chapter and the beginning of the next story. So tune in next Friday for the next installment, which will FINALLY circle back around to Peter and Tony after the events of Long Shadows.

It was a mess, reaching the escape pods in the midst of a collapsed series of rooms and hallways. But Gamora knew the exact right way around, and they took it.

"We'll make it," Gamora kept saying, every time they had to hide or change routes or pause to let a patrol pass. "We  _have_  to make it."

Quill just hoped the others had gotten out. That they'd taken a pod and fallen into the wormhole and jettisoned themselves all the way to Vormir, to meet with the rest of the team once everyone had gotten out.

_If_ everyone got out. And that was a big if.

"Almost there," Gamora whispered, leading them around a corner and down a corridor. "We're so close… _so_  close."

Quill kept quiet and kept moving.

"Hey! Intruders!"

Gamora was already on it. She whirled around and fired once, twice, three times with her gun, putting the entire patrol down. She holstered her gun and didn't even pause.

Then, finally, they were there.

"The pods!" Gamora exclaimed, running forward to make sure they were really there.

Quill approached. It was a huge room full of various pods, and one of them was missing. The air was still fizzling with energy, and Quill knew that the rest of the group had reached the pods first. They were already gone. "Looks like the others made it out."

Gamora nodded. "We'll have to follow close behind if we want to make it to Vormir. Come on, let's—"

"I wouldn't do that, if I were you."

They froze.

In retrospect, they should have known. Thanos was no fool, after all, and going to straight to the pods to escape was an obvious move. They were just lucky that the rest of the team had gotten away first, and now only Quill and Gamora were left to face the Titan.

Thanos stepped out of the shadows, expression grim. "I expected you to come here. When I saw the missing pod I thought I was too late, but…here you are. And you have the stone."

Gamora clenched her jaw. "Step out of the way. We're leaving."

"You know why I can't let that happen." Thanos took a step forward. Then he raised a hand, flicked a finger, and four members of the Black Order were filing in and surrounding them. Quill only recognized the one that had stabbed him way back on Vormir.

"Long time no see," he said, a weak attempt at humor.

The scary lady sneered at him and hefted her spear.

"Woah!" Quill raised his hands. "Let's just take a breath and—"

"Gamora," Thanos said. "You know how this goes, my daughter. Give me the stone or I'll use force."

"Then you'll use force," she said sharply. Her hand was on her sword, and Quill quickly reached for his pistols. He didn't have his rocket boots, but he could still put up a fight.

Thanos watched them with a completely level expression, and Quill knew what he was about to command a moment before he did it.

Thanos raised a hand, and the Back Order attacked as one.

Gamora leapt up to avoid some kind of scythe, using the handle as a launching pad to smash her knee into the owner's throat. He staggered, and she whipped around to catch the scary lady's spear before it could pierce her through the middle.

But Quill had his own things to worry about. The really big guy with the hammer swung at him, and he had to jump out of the way to avoid being crushed. He fired at him, the lasers just absorbing into his thick skin.

Quill paled.  _This isn't good._

The last member wasn't even doing much, was just watching with a smile, and Quill knew immediately that him and Gamora both were completely screwed. Even with only three of the Black Order fighting, they were already overwhelmed.

Gamora yelped as she was caught by the big guy, thrown to the ground, and nearly stomped on before she tossed to one side. Unfortunately that put her in the perfect position for the spear lady to stab at her, and that was just what she did. Gamora cried out.

"Hey!" Quill fired again, but the lasers had no effect. He swore and sheathed his blasters, going in with his bare fists. The spear lady was so surprised that Quill actually managed to get in a good hit, giving Gamora the chance to spring to her feet and sweep the woman's legs out from under her. She went down, and Quill and Gamora stood back to back.

"It's useless to fight," Thanos said as the Black Order rallied back together. "If you defeat my children, I'll set the guards on you. If you defeat  _them_ , I'll send even more. You'll have to tear through this entire ship if you want to escape, and in the end I'll be there to catch you. So give me the stone, and I'll let you and your friend live."

"Never," Gamora snapped.

Thanos shook his head. "You might want to rethink, my daughter. If you don't give in, I'll be forced to use more  _unsavory_  methods."

As if his children knew what he was thinking, the spear lady whipped forward and threw Quill to the ground. Gamora yelled, moved to help him, but the big guy with the hammer grabbed her before she could get there. The hilt of the hammer crushed down over Gamora's front, holding her to his chest, and she struggled to no avail.

Quill didn't even have time to fight before he was flat on his back with a spear held millimeters from his neck. A boot was on his chest to keep him from struggling, but he didn't dare try. He knew how close he was to being skewered.

"Gamora," he rasped, tense, but there was nothing else he could think to say.

Thanos gave this large, easy smile, as if he  _wasn't_  threatening someone with death. "Give me the stone, or I'll have him killed."

Gamora tensed, mouth open like she couldn't figure out what to say. "I—"

Thanos raised a brow. "This is the only thing in this universe you seem to care about, my daughter. Are you really going to let him die just for this?"

"Just for the entire universe?" Gamora asked, voice unsteady. "Yes, I…I think I can."

_This is pointless,_ Quill thought, desperate.  _She doesn't even have the option to save me, not by those standards! She doesn't have the stone!_

He stopped.

_Gamora doesn't have the stone…but I do._

Thanos took a step forward, threatening. "My daughter…"

_"No,"_ Gamora sneered, nails biting into her captor's arm. "You're asking me to sacrifice one man for half the universe."

"For  _balance_ ," Thanos corrected. "You have to understand that this isn't for me, it's for the universe!  _Complete_  balance. No one will ever starve again, be  _unhappy_  again, if you just hand me that orb."

Gamora just shook her head. "Try harder."

Thanos raised a hand, and Quill cried out as the spear moved from his throat to his stomach and stabbed down. Not deep, but the woman held it there long enough that the electricity started to burn the skin. By the time she let up, he was shaking.

"Was that enough?" Thanos asked. "Or will you force me to hurt him further?"

Gamora closed her eyes and stayed quiet.

Thanos snapped, "No, watch! You have to watch what you're causing." Then he raised his hand again, and Quill yelled as the spear slashed down at his arms, creating a few deep gashes that were then burned partially closed by the cruel electricity that followed. The shaking was worse this time, when the lady pulled back.

Gamora made this tiny sound like she was dying. At any moment she could end it—she could tell Thanos that Quill had the stone, not her. But she didn't. Not yet.

"Gamora," Thanos said, disappointed. "Please, stop this. Don't make him suffer for your blindness."

She tensed but wouldn't say a thing.

"Very well." Thanos sighed and raised his hand once more. "Proxima, finish this. She deserves to lose him, for he pain she's putting him through. His death will be merciful."

Proxima nodded and raised her spear, jumping back from chest to throat, and for just a moment Quill's life flashed before his eyes.

Then,  _"No!"_

Proxima paused, and Quill slumped with relief.

Thanos raised his head. "Are you prepared to give me the stone?"

"I…" Gamora hesitated, but jolted the instant Proxima started to shift the spear back toward Quill's throat. "No, wait! I…I'll give you the stone, but you have to do something for me, first."

"Let your friend go," Thanos said knowingly. "Is that it?"

Gamora nodded. "Give him a pod and your word that you won't stop him from getting away. Everything he knows I can tell you myself, and I'll cooperate if you let him go, so there's no point in keeping him."

"How do I know you won't refuse the instant I let him go?"

"You know me to be an honorable person. Swear to me you'll let Quill escape, and I'll give you all the information you want. And…I'll give you the stone before he leaves, as well. That should be insurance enough."

Quill had to hold back a surprised noise. That was  _risky_. What if Thanos figured out the ruse and caught them both?

But Thanos didn't seem shaken. "Then we have a deal," he said. "I swear to let Quill go once I have the orb in my hand."

Gamora reached behind her and pulled out the orb. She tossed it once, catching it soundly, and looked around nervously. "Clear a path to the pod," she said. "I'm not taking any risks."

Sharply, Quill realized what was about to happen.  _She's not going with me._

Thanos gestured, and reluctantly the Black Order moved to clear a path. Then Gamora was moving, pulling Quill to his feet.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I…I wanted to go with you. Will you let the others know what happened?"

There was so much he wanted to say. He wanted to beg her to come with him, to throw the orb and run. He wanted to assure her that he'd come for her. But Thanos was watching, was listening to every word, and he knew he couldn't give anything away.

"When you get out," Quill said lowly, "you know how to find us."

Gamora nodded. Her eyes were a bit shiny, but she seemed strong. "It's harder the second time," she whispered. "Saying goodbye."

Quill forced a smile. "Yeah…yeah, it is. But don't worry, I'm sure we'll live to a third."

"That's… _horrible_ , Quill, what the hell are you thinking?"

He laughed, but it was tight. "Just that I—I love you, Gamora, and I'll see you soon."

Her eyes really were watering. "I love you too. I'll see you before you know it."

Quill stepped back, and the Black Order parted to him. He got as close to the pod as he dared, and then he paused and waited for the right opportunity to go for it and get away as fast as he could.

"Now," Thanos said, "the stone."

Gamora gave a tight nod and walked forward, one miserable step at a time, the empty orb held tight at her side.

Thanos held out his hand, and Gamora placed it firmly in his palm. Quill inched backward.

"Excellent," Thanos rumbled. He turned the orb in his palm, a smile on his face, and reached to open it.

It happened fast. The orb clicked, turned, and popped open.

And Quill lunged.

He tried to grab Gamora, because he was an idiot that didn't know when to quit. He grabbed her and fell back and tried to drag her into the pod with him. But Thanos was already moving, was roaring with fury and grabbing Gamora by the neck, and there was this slow, awful moment where time stood still.

Then Gamora kicked as hard as she could, nailing Quill in the stomach and sending him flying. He crashed into the pod, head cracking against the control panel, and the doors shot closed behind him.

"No!" Quill yelled, shooting to his feet and trying to pry the doors open. Through the viewport he saw Thanos's hand clenched around Gamora's neck, squeezing as she thrashed and clawed at him. He was roaring, but Quill couldn't hear a thing. He pressed his palms to the glass and was helpless to do anything but watch.

The AI programed into the pod was droning in the background, counting down the seconds to takeoff. On the outside, the Black Order was trying to stop the pod from being expelled to no avail. Everything was locked tight, and there was no access from the outside.

_Ejection in ten…nine…eight…_

Quill held his breath. Gamora was hanging there, grasping Thanos's arm, choking and fighting for life.

_Seven, six, five…_

The muscles in Thanos's arm flexed visibly, almost obscenely, and Gamora's struggling began to cease.

_Four…three…two…_

Her struggling stopped entirely. And as Quill watched, horror bubbling hot and sour in his throat, Thanos opened his fist and let her fall to the ground. She didn't get up.

… _One._

The docking clamps disengaged, and Quill yelled, but there was nothing he could do. Gamora was lying there, so close yet so far, and he was helpless to do anything but watch as the pod hissed, let out a few warning beeps, and jettisoned into the depths of space.

Quill was at the console in a heartbeat. "We have to go back! Take us back!"

The computer clicked, and a monotone voice said,  _"Charting route."_

"Wha—route to where? I want to go to back! Take me back!"

The computer didn't respond. With a sinking sense of horror, Quill saw that when his head had hit the console, he'd damaged it beyond use. A portion of the panel was dented in.

"Please," Quill whispered, hands shaking so badly he could barely grip the console. "Please,  _please_ …"

But the computer was stuck on the location it had chosen, the console too battered to use, and Quill was once again helpless. He searched, looking desperately for a way to fix it, for some sign that Gamora was still alive, but he didn't get it.

The pod dropped into the jump point with a jolt, Quill's head cracked against the wall, and everything went black.

 

* * *

 

"There was no stone," Thanos growled, furious. "Search the planet! Destroy it if you have to!"

The Black Order scrambled away just as the regular guards arrived, going to find the stone on Xandar if it was indeed there. If it wasn't…

"It has to be somewhere," Thanos said as the guards moved to pick Gamora up off the ground. "It didn't  _vanish._ Maybe…"

Something clicked, and his expression turned sour.

"The escape pod.  _Peter Quill."_

"Sir," said one of the guards, "what do you want us to do with her?"

He looked to Gamora, lying unconscious on the ground. Alive, but just barely. He'd acted brashly in his rage. "Take her to the detention level and throw her in a maximum-security cell," he ordered. "She has a lot to answer for."

The guards started to skitter off.

"Wait."

They froze.

Thanos pointed at one of them, who immediately looked like he thought he was about to die. "You," he said. "I want you to trace both of the pods that were ejected from this ship and get their locations. We'll make sure that the stone didn't slip from under us."

The guard nodded, terrified, and darted out of the room. The others followed, and then Thanos was alone.

He turned. There was much to be done.

 

* * *

 

The next time Quill opened his eyes, he was immediately hit with this crushing sense of  _loss._

Gamora was gone. She was—Thanos had—!

He closed his eyes and shook.  _No._ he couldn't let himself mope; he had to hold his head high and get the stone somewhere safe. The stone, resting in his pocket with the weight of the entire universe hanging off of it. One of the most powerful relics in the galaxy.

He pushed himself upright, groaning as his head started to spin. He felt awful, and he knew he'd need medical attention as soon as possible. Wherever he was, he hoped there was a medical center close.

Oh, god—where  _was_ he?

All at once, he remembered. He remembered damaging the pod just as he'd gone into the wormhole. He remembered that he had  _no idea_  where he was going to end up.

Exhausted and nauseous and hurt, he pulled himself onto his knees and tried to look out the viewport. But all he saw was black.

"Um…computer lady? Are you there?"

Nothing.

"…Right. Why would you be there?"

Quill gasped in pain as he pulled himself up into the pilot's seat. His ribs were aching terribly, and the stab wound in his stomach was awful, and he just generally felt like he was about to pass out. By the time he was seated, his head was spinning.

"Did you take me nowhere?" he muttered into the darkness, though he knew he'd get no response. He grabbed for the joystick, cringing, and held tight. He pulled to one side. Sluggishly, the pod responded.

It felt like it took forever to turn around. But then something flickered at the edge of the viewport, and he turned to see a reddish planet coming into sight. Oh, good—he could land there and find a doctor and get some supplies and—

His eyes went wide as dinner plates.

That—that  _planet!_  It looked—but no—it couldn't be!

Quill looked down at the cracked navigation panel. "Come on, come on…computer, where have you landed me?"

It sparked a little like it was trying and failing to work. But it did have enough power to display a picture and a title, and that was enough to send Quill into shock.

_Now approaching: Terra._

Or, the name listed below it— _Earth._

The pod gained speed as it approached Terra's atmosphere, and Quill couldn't do a thing to stop it. He was crashing toward the ground, and no amount of smashing at the controls would keep it from happening

He'd just have to hope that in the time he'd been gone, Terra had developed the right technology to get him back in the air to go find his friends.

The pod shot through the atmosphere, and Quill closed his eyes.

All he could do was wait.


End file.
